


Wound Down & Stopped

by orphan_account



Series: O phantoms! [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sburb Session, But mostly POV - Dave, Child Abuse, Drug Use, F/F, Homophobic Language, Implied or Off-stage Rape/Non-con, M/M, Masturbation, Misogyny, Molestation, POV Multiple, Racist Slurs, Suicidal Thoughts, Triggers, Underage Drinking, Victim Blaming
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-08-06
Updated: 2013-08-15
Packaged: 2017-11-11 13:23:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 7
Words: 45,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/478995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Dave's interaction with an internet stalker comes to a terrible conclusion, he travels to Washington to spend summer break with John. However, as he tries to hide what happened to him while formulating means of coping by himself, his relationships with those around him become strained and twisted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The first morning, you wake up sore.

Bro is passed out on the floor next to your bed and the smell of stale whiskey permeates your room. You remember crying in his arms last night and feel stupid, worthless, hoping desperately that he was too drunk to remember when he wakes up. When you sit up, you have to stuff your knuckles in your mouth as the muscles around your middle scream in protest. Tears prick at the corner of your eyes and you refuse. You're done being pathetic – look where it's gotten you.  
The blanket swaddling you slides down to your waist and you're still naked. Studying your bare chest, you feel ugly, wonder why you ever thought you could be anything more than a toy for someone to break. How could you have been so foolish as to believe you were loved? How, when every day of your life spoke to the contrary? Who would ever, when all you can do is curl your arms around your stomach and choke on tears like a little bitch, pitying yourself for your own mistakes. 

The trek to the bathroom is a rough one. You first manoeuvre as best you can around Bro's long legs, a feat made all the more difficult by the spasms of pain in your lower back. He grunts angrily when you trip over his foot, barely catching yourself from sprawling by the corner of your desk. Walking is a chore. Your legs refuse to sort themselves out right, buckling and making you stumble, making you sag against the hallway wall to even stay upright. You've never been this clumsy in your life. Even with Bro's constant presence to prove that you'll never be the best – or even adequate, really – you've still at least always been quick and steady on your feet. Even after getting trashed by an ass whupping, even when you haven't eaten for days. Your faltering, shambling gait only drives home to you how weak and useless you truly are. 

In the bathroom, your reflection in the mirror is a trainwreck. There is a very long moment in which all you can do is stare in horror. Bruises mottle your neck, form fingermarks over your hips. An angry, red bitemark mars your shoulder and you know that if you turned around, you would find a similar mark on your ass. You gag, convulse a little as a surge of nauseous self-loathing rises in you.  
Wrenching your gaze away, you stagger into the shower, fumble the door closed and yank the water on, hot as it will go. It scalds and you flinch, hating yourself for not being tougher, forcing yourself to endure it. Your back hits tile and your fingers grope for a bar of soap as you slide slowly down the smooth surface. Drops of overheated water sting your face, your muscles cringe and ache, you grip the soap in your fist against your body.  
You are loathe to touch yourself, wincing every time your fingers slip over the soap and graze your skin. The steady drum of water barely helps, for as much as the pain burns away surface sensation, you can still sense the sweat, the grime that has soaked down to your bones. Huddled in the corner of a box of looming tile and frosted glass, the hiss of the shower muffling all else, you can almost imagine nothing else exists. All you need is for the water to work quicker, to boil and melt your skin off until you slip away down the drain, forgotten and never missed.  
One arm slung across your knees supports your weight as you clean yourself, but no matter how many times the soap repeats the same circuit, runs over the same track of skin, the feel of hands on you clings deep. Your fingers can't slip lower than your navel. You can hardly bear to look at the traitor between your legs. When you divert your gaze away from your scrawny, shameful body, you see the water circling the drain tinted red and your hands betray you. 

The soap that hits the floor with a wet thud is doing nothing. Your fingers find skin, already tender under the heat, and you'll peel it off yourself if you have to. The welts your nails leave begin light, quickly dissolve into the flush scalding water has already marked you with. After a while you can't even watch. Your attempts are feeble, like the rest of you, hopelessly scratching at the surface as you bang your head against your knees. The air in your small space is thick with heat and moisture, robbing you of a throat hoarse enough to give voice to your silent, open mouth. 

_ _ _ 

The apartment is empty when the hot water runs out and you pull yourself shivering out of the shower. The towel on the rack is Bro's, big enough to wrap around yourself, hide the new scratches and abrasions. Fear of the empty apartment thunders in your head. Your room is close, you can enter it and never come back out. Fear again clutches your chest when you try to enter.  
Crumpled on the floor, you see your silk boxers. The boxers you were given to make you want it; the ones that mean you deserved it. Your room isn't safe. Nowhere is safe. Your skin crawls and a trickle of water down your spine makes you think of fingers touching you and your throat closes up. You stagger backwards out of your doorway, heaving for air, make it to the living room. 

Bro's futon is propped upright and his comforter smells like him when you cocoon yourself in it. However much you might get whupped later for getting in his bed wet, the scent of him is familiar, oddly comforting. It reminds you of being little and running to him when you were scared in the night. He always called you a pussy, but he never sent you away, and you think that he was right. You have never been strong like him, or brave like him, or tough – and you think you never will be. Because people like him aren't as stupid as you are, they don't let themselves get tricked, they don't get raped.  
You bury your face in Bro's blanket, and smell him all around you, and it feels like a shield. As long as you bury yourself in this scent, in these soft, white layers of protection, you will be safe. You will be hidden and no one will be able to see the sad, trembling child that you really are. 

_ _ _ 

Fingers clutching your upper arm and hauling you up into a sit is what wakes you sometime Friday afternoon. You almost scream in panic, but Bro looms over you, shaking you in his grip until you're focussed enough to look up at him. The expression on his face is one of pure fury, only heightening your terror. 

“Th'fuck is this?!” he demands, shoving his hand in your face. His breath is thick with the smell of liquor and you're still too disoriented to make sense of what he means. When you finally realise he's holding your phone in front of your nose, your stomach sinks. The familiar image on your screen of your sleeping form makes your head swim and your chest feel tight. You look up at Bro, pleading silently, mouth agape. His upper lip twists into a horrible snarl. He smacks the side of your head, the plastic cupped in his palm biting into your temple. 

“Answer me, y'stupid little shit,” he shakes you, making your sore muscles ache and the blanket around you slip down to your waist. “The fuck _is_ this?!” 

Your mouth flaps uselessly, unable to find words, searching for breath as you shake your head desperately. An irate exhale accompanies the tightening of the grip on your arm as Bro kneels in front of you. He redirects his attention to your phone, his silence furious and judgemental as he interacts with the screen. 

“ 'Why,' “ he suddenly starts reading. “ 'You lookin' t'step up your game?' “ Your blood roars in your ears. You try to squeeze your eyes shut, knowing what comes next, but Bro gives you an angry shake.  
” 'Y'gonna come up here'n have your way with my tender young body?' “ He continues, his voice a tight mix of seething rage and a mocking pitch. He scrolls a little with his thumb. “ 'Maybe you'd like that...catchin' me...vulnerable, unable t'fight back.' “ “Stop!” you manage to choke out, shaking with a dry sob. Bro turns his face back to yours and you can tell he's glaring through his shades. “I'm sorry!”  
”Y'gonna cry about it, y'little sissy?” he snaps, throwing your phone down beside you and shaking you for good measure. “Y'gonna baw about it like a little girl until I actually feel sorry again for somethin' you _brought down on your own fuckin' head?!”_

His voice is rising and he's shaking you like a ragdoll and you can't stop crying, can't stop proving him right. Apologies spill from your mouth as steadily as the tears on your cheeks because of course he's right, of course you did this to yourself. Everything is your fault. 

“Shut up!” Bro reinforces his order with a slap across your mouth and you bite your lower lip, swallowing your sobs. “You fuckin' retarded or somethin'? Th'fuck would ya do this for?”  
You feel so stupid and guilty and ashamed. Bro jams your phone in your face again. Red and black pesterchum dialogue hovers mockingly before your eyes.  
”Y'want me t'fuckin' feel sorry for ya when you were askin' for it?” Your chest feels like it's imploding. “Y'think y'getta cry like a bitch when y'wanted it?” He slaps you again when you shake your head and try to say “no.” “Th'fuck'd ya think was gonna happen, y'stupid little shit? Th'fuck is wrong with you?!”  
”I-” the words don't come out right. You struggle for breath. “I-”  
”I- I- I-” Bro mocks you. “Spit it out, y'pussy little retard! You what? Y'asked for it? Y'got what you deserved?”  
”I though someone actually gave a shit!” you manage to spit out, before clutching your sides to try and keep your sobs forced down. Bro rears away from you and you brace yourself for another blow. Instead, his hand leaves your arm, and without the support you double over. 

You hear Bro's angry footsteps walk away from you, hear the jingle of his keys. The slam of the front door makes you jump, fills you with shame and despair. He can't even look at you, won't even beat you, you're too disgusting to touch. You rock forward, arms wrapped around yourself, forehead against your knees as you run your throat hoarse sobbing. Of course he doesn't care about you. Why should he, when everything you are is weak and ugly and the complete opposite of how he taught you to be? Why should anyone?  
Your tears carry you through the afternoon, through hunger, until you're long past too exhausted to sit up and grow too weak to stay awake. 

_ _ _ 

Bro doesn't return on Saturday. You drink water. You can't force yourself to eat and you remind yourself that you should be grateful to Bro for this survival mechanism. Without years of experience, you would never have learned that water and Advil can perfectly substitute a meal. 

The sound of your phone's last, dying gasp is loud in the silent apartment. It's the first noise it's made since Bro brought it out here. There are no more texts for you, to tell you how attractive you are; no more emails to make you feel desired and cared about. He hasn't even come back for seconds, though your fitful dozing magnifies every tread or creak in the building into paranoia, makes you feel the grip of hands holding you down all over again. Conscious, however, you know that he's done with you. You've served your purpose, been broken in. Whatever worth you may have had has been used up. You have nothing left to offer.  
You don't bother to get your phone. The charger is in your bedroom, and the yawning maw of your door is enough to make your hands shake. It dies, and you don't leave the futon, and you pull on one of the shirts Bro discarded on the floor when you need to go to the bathroom. 

When you pour ibuprofen out into your hand, you stare at it for a long while. The medicine cabinet is full of pill bottles you don't bother to understand – the prescriptions are made out to people you don't know, the labels don't tell you what they do. You look at the five, neat little red tabs in your palm, the full cabinet, and wonder what would happen if you took everything. You're too much of a sissy to find out, and as you close the cabinet, you tell yourself it's because you did actually want it, you liked it.  
The image the mirror throws back at you is small, pathetic, drowning in an oversized tee belonging to a man far greater than him. You're not a man; it's too late for that. All you are is scrawny, bony, nose too big, skin too sallow, circles around your mutant freak eyes much too dark. How could you ever think you had a chance? Who would ever actually like you? You dry-swallow the Advil and limp back to the living room, crawling back into your little den of Bro's smell. 

_ _ _ 

Sunday around 1, a smack on your bare butt startles you awake and Bro's voice tells you, “Put'cher ass away, little dude.”  
The blow makes your still-tender insides ache in pain and you struggle to pull in sobbing gasps as your mind dredges up the feel of fingers digging into your flesh, pulling you apart. You tug Bro's shirt down to cover yourself, as if that will save you, and concentrate on getting your breathing under control as you sit up.  
Bro returns from the bathroom and the sway in his step tells you he's drunk again. You wonder if it's still, but then he stops before you and you brace yourself for a repeat of Friday night. His fist extends and you flinch before you realise it's an offering. Watching him carefully, just barely catching the fleeting knit of his brow, you cup your hand below his. Three light blue, oval pills fall into your upturned palm. You frown at them in confusion. 

“What're these?”  
”Jus' take 'em, they'll make y'feel better.” 

He walks away and you don't know if the nausea that rises in you is from hunger or the aftershocks of remembered sensation, the ghosting feel of hands clutching your hips. You tilt your head back and throw the pills down your throat. One of them sticks a little. Bro is rattling around in the kitchen, and by the time he comes back into view, he's on the phone ordering pizza. He's got two Coronas threaded in his thick fingers and passes you the opened of the pair. Warily, you accept his offer, eyeing him as your hands clutch cold glass.  
He isn't even looking at you. You wish he was. If he was, you could tell him you don't deserve this, you failed him, you're not an adult – a man, like he is. But he remains face forward, and you have no choice but to wash down the pill clinging to your throat with bitter swill. You don't cringe once the whole bottle, but Bro isn't looking to see. He finishes his call and simply twists off the cap of his own beer, drinks it in silence as he flips the TV on. 

When the pizza arrives, Bro is on his fifth beer. You feel...flat. Not numb, not sad, not anything. Just flat, grey, maybe a little drowsy. Or a lot drowsy. Things feel kind of like melting. It's different from a normal sort of drunk – one beer doesn't do much for you anyway. The smell of the pizza makes your stomach growl, but you're not hungry. You watch Bro eat slice after slice, silent, swaddled in the warm, formless mass of his comforter. The sounds from the TV are slow, incomprehensible, and your head is fuzzy.  
As Bro stands, his movements are hard to follow. The sight of him dusting crumbs off his pants makes you dizzy and you close your eyes. Your head slumps against the back of the futon and if you hear Bro leaving the room, you think maybe you imagined it.  
Bro's hand falls on your shoulder and you open your eyes in surprise, see him standing in front of you. It's a struggle to get your head back upright, keep your eyes open. You breath feels a little short and Bro is trying to draw your attention to the table. 

“These'll help y'calm down, okay?” he's indicating a small collection of the pills he gave you earlier. Sound is behaving wrong. “If y'can't sleep, these'll fix it,” he indicates a second collection of awkwardly elliptical yellow pills. “Y'gotta make 'em last though, so don't be takin' 'em all at once, a'right? Shit's expensive, y'know?”  
You nod. You actually _don't_ know, but nodding seems right. The hand on your shoulder pats it heavily.  
”Y'got all'a that, little bro?” 

Another good time to nod. Bro leaves your line of sight. His footsteps cross to the door, it opens and closes. You hear the scrape of the key in the lock and his footsteps on the stairs. You wait for the fear to come. It never does, and you breathe a sigh of relief. Still, you pick up one more pill out of the first set, just in case.  
You spend the rest of the afternoon staring blankly at the TV. 

_ _ _ 

Days slip by unnoticed. Time leaves dark pockets in your memory. You sleep, dream of suffocating, wake to shaking and paranoia. You don't keep track of how many pills you take a day – one, two, three, sometimes even four. You take one whenever footsteps in the hallways become too loud, when the creeping feeling of being watched seeps into the edges of your mind. You favour blue over yellow; when you combine them you're left flat on your back, half-paralysed, mind clear and blank. No matter how much you take, your supply doesn't diminish. 

Bro is in and out of the apartment – mostly out. He's always drunk when you see him, sometimes tweeking. Sometimes he sits down next to you and shares a bowl out of his personal stash. Sometimes you play awful knock-offs of more famous FPS franchises together, and things almost seem normal again, but for your newly acquired inability to competently hold a controller.  
He doesn't hit you; he hasn't since he found out you asked for it. He doesn't touch you at all. For all the times you've been rankled by having your hair ruffled; for every dick move elbow-jabbing your ribs or shoulder checking to fuck you up when you're winning against him; even for how many times you've resented him, your butt sore and bruised from his belt – all of it was preferable to feeling filthy and tainted. Even when he's been home for one of your nightmares, he doesn't so much as extend a hand on your shoulder to anchor you back in reality. He just stands and watches until you've stopped trying to tear your blankets off, until you've realised where you are on your own, that you're not being attacked. When you've settled, he gives you brownish-orange pills stamped  OC, and tells you to chew them so they kick in faster, and hands you a bottle of apple juice to wash down their horrible, bitter taste. He's always already out the door by the time the first warm, euphoric waves wash over and calm your anxiety. 

At some point your charger appears in the living room. You get an email from John, asking if you're okay, if you still want to come visit him, apologising for anything he might have done that made you mad. It's dated 6/13 and you can't tell him that it feels like he's writing to you from an alternate universe, or to a different version of you, one who's already dead. He can't know, so you tell him that everything's fine, you're still on for coming up, you just can't get on pesterchum because Bro's being a dick. You hate lying to him. You pick up a yellow, look at the neat little PERCOCET stamp on one side for a moment before popping it in your mouth, and you wonder if things will be better in Washington. 

By the time you wake up the next day, you've forgotten about the email.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title taken from:  
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAe1WjW-GPs


	2. Chapter 2

It's midday Saturday when the GPS prompts your dad to exit off the freeway. The trip that he said would normally take three days has only run a little over two, but a big part of that had to do with him letting you drive through most of Wyoming yesterday, and some of Kansas this morning. It's one of those things that makes your dad a pretty cool guy – he may be a stickler about keeping your grades up and getting to bed at a decent time, but he'll still handwave something like the fact that you only got your Learner's a little over two months ago. You need the experience on highways after all, he'd reasoned, and besides, you two made great time when you could trade shifts. The fact that you weren't allowed to even be on a freeway was basically inconsequential, although he did make sure you were only behind the wheel on the long, empty stretches.  
The sturdy little Subaru your dad rented for the trip has air conditioning and _man_ are you grateful for it. When you stopped for gas just outside Dallas, it was already 85° at ten in the morning. Now you're pretty sure having the A/C cranked is the only thing between you and being miserably hot; the sky outside is cloudless blue and the windows of the car are warm to the touch.

You watch the cluster of skyscrapers in the distance sink below ribbons of freeway overpasses and blocky industrial buildings. It's a little surprising, seeing downtown Houston so far from the off-ramp you're taking. More so is the neighbourhood you're pulling into.  
Dad has always told you to bear in mind that many people live very differently than you, that some people are not as well off as you are. You know he used to do some sort of volunteer work before you came along, and the church you attend always collects for charities, but personally, you've hardly ever been outside Maple Valley. Sure, you've taken the occasional trip into Seattle proper, especially for the zoo when you were little, and you've gone on plenty of camping trips to the Olympics or the coast, both with your dad and for school, but that's about the extent of your experience outside your quiet neighbourhood. 

This place you've just pulled into feels the absolute opposite of what you're used to. Instead of neat, prim lawns, there are swaths of concrete, cyclone fences, parking lots. The car passes a few industrial areas full of rows of 18-wheelers and shipping platforms. Even as you pull into a more residential section, it doesn't get much greener. Actual houses are scarce, barely maintained when they do crop up. You pass one that actually has a car parked on the dead, dry grass of what should be a lawn and almost laugh because you thought that was something that only happened in movies. You turn to point it out to your dad, but the strained, slightly concerned look on his face keeps you quiet, and you go back to taking in your alien surroundings.  
Most of the residential spaces are run-down apartment buildings, or long-stretching row tenements that all look depressingly the same. The rental car stands out like a sore thumb among most of the beaters that line the street, although you are passed by one shiny, black SUV with a stereo system that rattles your windows. There's a grocery store, a local chain, that you pass, but otherwise most of the businesses you see are small and independently owned. Your dad turns a corner occupied by a convenience store with barred windows, and that's when you see Dave's apartment. 

Rising up a few stories above its neighbours, the building is huddled between a smaller clutch of apartments and a tight cluster of houses. The nearest house has its windows broken out and boarded up, and every building on the block looks dilapidated, Dave's included. Your dad parks in front of the chain link fence surrounded the house nearest Dave's apartment and peers up through the windshield. 

“You're sure this is where your friend lives?” the concern is obvious in his voice and you peer at the building number.  
”Yeah, that's the address,” you answer, looking at him and smiling half-heartedly. “He's up in 610.”  
Your dad takes a long breath before unbuckling. “Well, let's go get him.” 

You nod, a sudden surge of excitement rising in you. Even if he lives in a pretty crummy neighbourhood, you're about to see Dave in person for the first time! You unbuckle quickly and pop your door and are instantly slammed full-body with hot, humid air. The smell of exhaust and motor oil assaults you and you wrinkle your nose, looking over the car for your dad's reaction. He meets your eyes as he auto-locks the rental, then nods in the direction of the building.  
Whatever intercom the apartment may have had has long since gone to ruin. The main door is propped open with a brick, so you shrug at your dad and let yourselves in. The air in the entrance is not much different from outside. A bit stuffier maybe, and stale smelling. The building is too old for an elevator, so you take a deep breath and start climbing the steep, creaking stairs. 

_ _ _ 

The sound of someone knocking at your front door startles you bolt upright from a dead sleep. Your head spins and you cradle your hands around it, curling down into your knees. As you suck deep breaths into your cottony mouth, the rapping at your door repeats. The sound is overloud and harsh to your ears. You drag yourself off the futon, wincing and confused as you stagger to the front door.  
Bro apparently changed the locks at some point recently – the paint on the door bears the tell-tale scuffmarks and there's a newly installed chain lock. You make sure it's in place before you tug open the door and squint out into the hallway. 

“Dave!” 

The chirpy greeting catches you off-guard and you draw back a little, blinking your eyes to focus. You squint harder to confirm that John Egbert is indeed standing at your front door, grinning like a complete goober and practically vibrating with excited energy. He's not as washed out as he usually is on Skype, although he is about as tall, and has gotten buffer since the last time you saw him. With a surge of embarrassment, you realise you don't remember when that was. You're not at all prepared for him to be here, or to head out on the trip to Washington you were supposed to have planned. Your awkward silence puts a bit of a strain on John's smile, but he covers for both of you. 

“Dude, I didn't know you lived in such a crappy place,” he says around a half-smile, in his typical, gormless fashion. It gets him a chastising, “John!” and for the first time you notice the man standing behind him. 

John's exasperated, half-assed apology immediately followed by a corny joke fades out as the rush and ring of blood rises in your ears. You're harshly aware of your ragged breath, your racing heartbeat as you stare in horror at the man behind John. Pressed slacks, athletic build, same height as Bro, hair combed back, expensive dress shirt – every part of you screams it's him, it's him, _it's him._ He's come back for more and he's going to hurt you, he's going to hurt John, how can John not see the danger he's in?! Your chest feels tight and you're frozen to the spot and just as you're certain you're about to hyperventilate, John follows your gaze over his shoulder. 

“Oh yeah!” he says brightly, and you try to silently convey the awful threat looming behind him. “I guess you've never met my dad before, huh?” 

You blink, confused. It's not possible. You know it's _him._ There's no way this is John's dad – they look nothing alike. He's white, strong-jawed, aquiline-nosed.  
Adopted. You brain decides to switch back on and you remember. You've known John was adopted almost as long as you've known him. There's nothing to say he and his father should look alike. As the panic clears, you take a harder look, relief flooding your senses. He's not the guy. His hair is too dark, his posture and body type too dissimilar. Although his nice clothes still scare you a little, you can think with a cool head, reason that logically it would be impossible for him to be in Texas and Washington at the same time. 

“Dave, you all right?”  
Between the initial surprise and the panic, you realise you've been frozen behind your half opened door without so much as a “Hey.” You mutter out a reassurance and John let's out a slightly scoffing laugh.  
”Well, can we come in, or do we have to wait out here until you're ready to go?” 

Embarrassed, you mutter a, “Nah, man, come in,” before sliding the door closed and unlatching it. As soon as it's opened back up, John's on you, the arms he wraps around your shoulders way stronger than you imagined. The hug makes you acutely aware of how bad you're shaking, and you silently plead that he doesn't notice. If he does, he at least has the tact to not mention it when he pulls out of the embrace, clapping you on the back and positively beaming.  
”Holy crap, dude!” His broad grin is infectious, even if the best you can muster is a smirk. “I can't believe we're actually doing this!”  
”Yeah, man,” you answer softly, eyes down at the carpet. You need your shades. You need to be able to look at John without meeting his eyes, without giving away the tainted, awful person you've become. You need to be able to keep your eye on his dad, because now that he's in your apartment, your brain is telling you to run, hide, get away from him all over again. 

“Are you ready to go?” John is asking, hands shoved in his pockets as he surveys your apartment. His dad has hung back in the doorway, blocking your escape. They're working together – John is bait to lure you into a sense of security. You feel betrayed and cornered and John's still chattering away, telling you, “You look like you just woke up.”  
You've de-synced. John's still operating in the world where everything's normal and he picks you up to spend the summer in Washington, just as planned. You hear yourself being the Dave that version of reality requires, telling him, “Yeah, gimmie a sec t'get dressed,” and cautioning him not to touch anything, but you're off-track. There's a threat looming in your doorway and you're trapped and the walls breathe remembered sound and sensation. You are not the Dave that John thinks you are. That version of you cracked and died and you have to hide the body before he realises something's wrong. 

As you steer yourself on autopilot down the hall, you remember being shoved up against the wall, hard flesh grinding against you and busy fingers tugging at your prick. The sounds of your desperate panting rattle around your brain, the feel of your hips pushing back, ready and slutty and wanting it, thrums through your body and John can't know. He can't know his friend is gone, broken and replaced by this weak little shit who can't even defend himself, this whore who spreads his legs for a little kindness and gets off on being raped.  
You stagger into your bedroom in a daze. You can't think in here. Any second you're going to be grabbed from behind, thrown back onto your bed where you belong and fucked until you bleed. The boxers he got you are still crumpled on the ground. Your closet darkroom has been gutted, smashed packets of ramen spilling out onto the floor, cereal strewn and ground into the carpet. Clothes – you need clothes. Your dresser has been turned out, its rifled contents heaped on the floor. You recover an old knapsack and shove clothes into it blindly. Any second now – the longer you're in here, the more you put yourself at risk, the more you prove how badly you want it. With shaking hands you snatch up your shades and shove them on your face, tug on a pair of old track pants. The mere thought of pulling off any clothes while in your room makes your breath hitch and wheeze in your tight chest and Bro is just gonna have to deal with losing a shirt. 

You bolt from your room as the fear and paranoia singing in your brain peaks. Too panicked to acknowledge the presence in your living room, you grab the yellow smuppet by Bro's computer that you know he keeps his weed in and scurry to the bathroom. The hiss of the tap when you crank it on is deafening. You bend over the sink, gasping, eyes screwed shut. Your shades clatter against the porcelain when you remove them. You splash water on your face, try to calm your breathing, do it again. Your chest is tight, hands shaking; you feel flushed and don't dare look up at your reflection. You splash water on your face again. You need to calm down – you need pills.  
Yanking the medicine cabinet open, you rummage through the array of bottles inside. You twist off caps, check the contents, throw aside those that look unfamiliar. You find two bottles of yellows and one orange, stash them away in your bag, before you come across what you need. The bottle is almost empty when you shake three blue pills into your trembling palm. You throw them back, scoop up a mouthful of water to wash them down. Even knowing that they're in you is oddly calming. You cap the bottle, throw it in your bag with the others, dig through the cabinet until you find a second one. The smuppet is unceremoniously beheaded and you tug out Bro's fairly sizeable stash, shove it down under some of your clothes. Straightening, you shut the tap off, smooth your hair down with a deep breath, return your glasses to your face. You leave the medicine cabinet open as you unlock the bathroom door, still unable to look at yourself in the mirror. 

_ _ _ 

It's pretty hard not to go snooping around Dave's apartment after he told you not to. Your inclination to do so despite him must be showing in your face, because your dad gives you a warning, “John” from his spot at the door. You turn to see him surveying the front room of the apartment, that slightly worried knit in his brow again, and turn back to look around yourself. 

Dave seemed uncharacteristically anxious and quiet when he answered the door. The quiet you assumed was because he'd obviously just woken up, clad as he was in an oversized shirt and no pants, with his hair sticking up funny. Checking out his apartment, you decide the anxiety must have been embarrassment, because this place is a _pit._ Pizza boxes are stacked three-high beside the futon in the middle of the room, surrounded by countless beer bottles. Those gross puppet things his older brother makes are scattered everywhere. Dirty laundry lays strewn among empty take-out containers of all kinds. You bet your dad is behind you just itching to take care of this place. 

You hear the swish of cheap fabric and the sound of swift footsteps. Looking up, you see Dave hurrying back out of the hall he went down, presumably from his room. He doesn't even seem to see you as he rushes through the front room, grabs a yellow puppet for some reason, and disappears into the adjoining bathroom. You hear the sink come on and laugh inwardly. Since Bro hasn't been letting him on pesterchum, you haven't been able to remind Dave about the trip as incessantly as you would have liked. It makes sense, then, that he's not totally ready to go.  
After a while of listening to him banging around in the bathroom, the water shuts off and the door flies open. Dave looks less harried, walks with a more controlled, consciously casual gait. His shades are in place and his hair is smoothed down and, though he still looks a bit peakier than usual, he seems more like himself. 

“Sorry 'bout that,” he tells you as he flops down on the edge of the futon. His voice is still slightly clipped, and you're delighted to hear he's not yet awake enough to be accurately masking his southern drawl.  
”No worries,” you reply, watching him tug on his red Chucks. “We can still probably get outta town by rush hour.” 

Dave gets to his feet with a casual shrug. He unplugs his phone's charger and shoves them both in his bag, before hefting it on one shoulder and grabbing his keys in the other hand. You beam when he mutters a soft “Sure,” and he seems unable to not return at least a small smile. Your dad leads the way out of the apartment.  
”Where's Bro, anyway?” you ask Dave's back as he locks up behind himself. A loose shrug answers you, and you think maybe you detect a hint of bitterness when he tells you, “Don't matter.” 

_ _ _ 

The first thing that comes to mind is how the heck does he know? Sure, the neighbourhood you and John pick him up in is a little rough, but he's only fifteen – little more than a child. He's only just begun growing into his petite, skinny body, with its slender limbs and long neck that stick out of his oversized shirt, his plump little bottom that just barely shows when he clambers into the back seat of the rental. You catch your gaze lingering where it shouldn't as you hold his door and chastise yourself. You angrily remind yourself that this is your son's friend you're ogling, this is a minor whom you will be looking after for the better part of the summer.  
But as you slide into the driver's seat, you remember the way he looked at you and John when you were at his door. You remember the darkness in his eyes that spoke of unwanted knowledge and maturity beyond his years. There was pain and fear there, of a kind that made you want to drop to your knees and hold him in your arms, but also, impossibly, recognition. The stare he levelled at you was one of stunned familiarity, one that told you silently, beyond the chance of possibility, that he _knew._  
As if scenting it on you, he seemed to know instinctively what you have, for years, kept hidden from your colleagues, your friends and neighbours, even your own son. Just one look was enough to tell you that he knows about weekend business trips that only make it as far as Seattle, as far as Volunteer Park or Aurora. He knows about the money that you put aside, secretly budgeted to cover hotel rooms, dinners, company.  
A boy his age shouldn't know such things. A part of your heart aches for his lost naivety, even as you find yourself viewing him in an increasingly unscrupulous manner. As you think on how shockingly less innocent and sheltered he may be than your John, it occurs to you how familiar his face could, in fact, be in a different light. That in the context of no real names, no personal questions, he could easily be one of the more tender boys you've doted on, treated well, run hands and mouth all over. 

Pulling back onto the freeway, into the first snarls of early evening rush hour, you chance a quick glance into the rearview mirror. Even interacting with John, your pride and joy, he seems a stark contrast. Where your boy is an enthusiastic, bubbly little chatterbox, he is quiet, reserved and inwardly drawn. As different as the two of them are, you find your mind easing back into a baser view of him. Studying his reflection, you find yourself wondering if the freckles dusting his face and arms are as thick on the rest of his body. You change lanes in the crawl of traffic and wonder if his skin would be as soft under your touch as it looks, how sweet his full lips would be on yours.  
With his ill-fitting clothes and the russack he clutches to himself protectively, he looks like a runaway. He looks like the most desperate young men you've swept off the streets for a night, the ones you've wished you could keep, even after you've paid them. You catch yourself imagining him gasping and groaning, moving beneath you the way they do, and you force your attention squarely on the road. A stray thought, a wondering of whether his nipples would be dusky brown or rosy pink – and would he moan when you suckled at them, makes you readjust in your seat. 

John guffaws behind you and you flick your eyes back to the mirror. Your son is playfully shoving his friend, who has cracked a timid, beautiful smile. Your mind sinks back to reality and you feel like a monster, turning your attention back to the long drive ahead. 

_ _ _ 

John's dad pulls off the freeway as the sun is going down. The conversation for the past five hours has been carried largely by John himself, as he recounts the two day trip down to get you, talks about new video games he's picked up, goes over his plans for the summer out loud. For your part, you mostly stay quiet, the drugs in your system keeping you muted and calm. You were relieved for the gas station break a few hours back – the pressure in your head had begun building again, and when you shook out a yellow in the privacy of the station bathroom, your fingers had been trembling. By now you've grown drowsy, although a slight headache is creeping its way in on you. 

The hotel you pull up to looks fancy, although both John and his dad seem unimpressed. There's a Denny's attached to it, which makes your stomach grumble, and you pass an indoor pool as the three of you head up to your rooms. All of it makes you feel small and out of place. Self-consciously, you clutch your bag to your chest as you walk behind John's dad, studying his back.  
You can't shake the feeling you get around him. It's familiar, that odd mingling of tension and anticipation you got from flattering text messages and lewd email little less than a month ago. As you pulled out of Houston, you caught his eye on you in the rearview, and though you know it was only because John was being a noisy dork, you felt scrutinised and exposed. You don't understand why. He's done nothing wrong. He looks like nothing more than your average corporate stiff. Yet still, all afternoon you found yourself anxiously studying the back of him, keeping a wary eye on him while John talked your ear off. His broad shoulders dredged up that frightened, excited feeling and his finely tailored silk shirt reminded you of the consequences. The thought of trying to sleep around him both terrifies you and thrills you, making you sneer inwardly at how fucked you are in the head.  
Relief breaks over you in a rush when John's dad lets the both of you into a large, two-bed room and leaves you to your own devices. John throws himself down across one of the beds with a loud sigh, stretching his arms over his head and his legs straight out as you fuss with making sure the door's locked. 

“Oh my gooooosh, I'm _starving!_ ” John groans loudly, pulling a half-cocked grin from you and making your stomach growl in solidarity. The sight you're greeted with when you turn sends a sudden thrill through you. The bed closest the door is currently occupied by your best friend, who is sprawled on his back, elbows propping him halfway upright. His knees are spread, supporting the other half of his weight, while his cargo shorts show off his slim, toned legs, hug his groin just enough to get your imagination buzzing. The drape of his shirt reveals just the smallest, most tantalizing sliver of his side.  
You feel like a creep. Just the slightest stir of arousal worms its way through you and you feel ashamed, perverted, disgusting. John's grinning up at you, hair slightly mussed, face open and trusting and you're betraying him. You're mentally undressing him, raping him with your eyes like some lonesome, pathetic creep and why did you ever think this was a good idea? You should just ask John's dad to take you right back to Houston, leave you back in the apartment where your filthy, twisted mind can't hurt anyone but yourself.  
You almost don't hear John when he asks, “Wanna see what we can get on room service?”  
The question pulls you up out of your thoughts. You try to shake off the crawling of your skin, the way that even coming close to feeling turned-on makes it seem grimy, permanently stamped with sweat and filth. You tighten your grip on your russack. 

“Sure, gimmie a sec, though,” you mutter, crossing the floor for the bathroom. Out of the corner of your eye, you see John track your movement, but you can't bring yourself to look at him. You slip into the bathroom in a hurry.  
The place is easily twice the size of yours back home. There's actually a bathtub connected to the shower, a long countertop, a toilet tucked away behind its own little door. Your fingers fumble on the lock and your bag slips out of your hand, hitting the floor with a rattle. You try to take deep, slow breaths to calm yourself, letting your eyes slide shut and resting your head back against the door. You can't do this, you don't know how to do this, you still have to do this. If you don't, if you come out and tell John, “haha jk i actually dont wanna hang out with you after you drove halfway across the country to pick me up,” it won't just make him suspicious, it'll probably crush him. Asking them to just turn around and drive you back to Texas would be just about the biggest dick move you could pull and you don't want to go back, really, anyway. You just don't want John to see you for who you really are. The longer he's exposed to you, the more obvious it will become to him that you're awful and perverted and fucked up, and then he'll _know._  
You bite your lower lip, swallowing the little hiccups of sound rising like bile in your constricting throat as you clench your trembling hands into fists. Your heart slams against your chest and your legs fail you, sinking you down to the floor. You feel trapped. The sound of the fan overhead melds with the ringing in your ears and there's no way out. That oppressive, collapsing feeling you've grown so used to is closing in and your chest is heaving because you can't breathe. If you breathe it means giving voice to the choked, animal whining that is clinging to the back of your throat, and that noise is only preface to selfish, shameful, pathetic tears that John must never see. 

Outside the bathroom, you hear voices. Through the door and under the hum of the fan the words are unintelligible, but one is light, while the other is deep, making you shiver. You can't do this – you have to do this. You force your body to uncurl, groping for your bag. It's like a safety blanket when you pull it up into your lap, hold it against your chest. The contents rattle, shift when you dig through them. They make no sense and you have to stop yourself from just dumping the whole thing out in frustration. The first bottle you uncover is blues, the second yellows, the third the same. Keening impatiently, you wrench the lid off the fourth, breathing a sigh of relief when you find it full of fat, round, orange pills. You shake one out and pop it with practised ease, barely even grimacing at the bitter flavour that bursts in your mouth when you crack and chew it with your back teeth. Concentrating on dragging yourself to your feet is more consuming than the taste. You roll yourself forward into a crouch, use the sink counter to haul yourself upwards.  
There's still blood ringing in your ears and your arms still shake, but the tightness has left your chest now that you've found your out. The hiss of the tap is harsh in your panic-sensitive ears, but the handfuls of water you scoop into your mouth are cool and wash down the sour medicine flavour. The coppery aftertaste doesn't even bother you, so long as it's cold and drowns the sound of voices in the other room.  
You're grateful for your shades, still almost as too-big for you as they were the day John sent them. Their size hides a fair portion of your face, masks the heavy bags you know are there under your eyes, distracts from the fact that you're two shades too pale for the time of year. Scrutinising your reflection above the streaming water for the first time in almost a month, your skin looks lacklustre and sallow. You've lost weight visibly, and the hair that hangs around your face is lank from lack of washing. You haven't showered more than a couple times since it happened – the sight of your already ugly, scrawny naked body is too disgusting now. 

Time has long since stopped behaving properly for you, so you're not really sure how long it's been when you hear the door to the outside room shut. Steeling yourself with a deep breath and the first calming trickles of warmth along the edges of your mind, you shut the tap off, towelling dry your hands and chin. When you let yourself out of the bathroom, John turns a happy grin in your direction. The guilt of misleading him is dampened somewhat by the muffling settling in your brain. You shoot him a friendly smirk in response, gliding over your footsteps. 

"There wasn't anything really appetizing on the room service menu,” he shrugs. “Dad gave me some cash, though. He said we could run down to that Denny's and grab dinner, but we gotta go to bed as soon as we get back. Guess he wants to leave hella early tomorrow, or something. Wanna go?”  
” _Hell_ yes,” you reply, your stomach giving another little growl of agreement. 

_ _ _ 

So far, the most surprising thing about hanging out with Dave in real life is that fact that he is just so quiet, quiet, quiet. With all the text-critting he does online, you expected him to be a total motormouth – nothing but wry jokes, and lengthy similes, and maybe even some super dorky, completely lame raps. Instead, you've been landed with this introverted, soft-spoken and, dare you say it, shy dude who you almost want to shake by the shoulders and ask, “Who are you and what have you done with Dave?” 

He's quiet when you guys go down to dinner. The oversized shirt you'd thought he went to the bathroom to change drapes off his narrow shoulders to pool around his skinny arms. His wristbones stick out and everything about him looks small and underfed. He's definitely gotten way skinnier since the last time you guys Skyped. Yet, when you assure him that Dad will take care of everyone this summer, over the burger you practically had to bully him into ordering, he seems to stiffen and lose his appetite. You spend the rest of the meal filling the silence with a recount of your trip to the Cascades while he disconsolately moves his fries around his plate. He stays almost completely silent all the way back to the room and until the both you settle down for the night. 

He's quiet almost all of Sunday. Dad wakes you up at five in the morning, making sure he has enough time to shuffle the two of you down to stuff your faces with the complimentary breakfast in the hotel banquet room and be on the road by six. It's too damn early, even for you, so you doze through most of the rest of Oklahoma while Dave busies himself with your 3DS.  
You swap places with your dad twice, getting behind the wheel after lunch, just outside of Salina, and pulling into a rest stop about two hours outside of Denver at his behest. Dave scuttles off to the bathroom the second time, looking a little harried and sweating a bit. You see concern touching your dad's features again as his eyes follow him, and make a big, noisy deal of stretching to distract his attention. After seeing Dave's apartment, you're maybe a little worried Dad might start thinking he's a bad influence or something. If nothing else, his mother henning impulse has got to be up to 11, so you make a point to give your back a really good pop. He shoots you a quick look, a “John, that's bad for you,” and you nod with a secret grin, loping away to find some kind of vending machine snack.  
When you return, Dave's already in the back seat. He jumps a little when you clamour in on the other side, softly turning down your offer to share your fruit snacks. If you didn't know any better, you would have sworn he was staring at your dad before you showed up. 

It's a little after ten when your dad pulls off the freeway into Casper. A lot of the area you pull into seems closed for the night, but for a couple gas stations and fast food joints. It takes some wheedling, and polite back-up from Dave when you prompt him, but Dad eventually gives in to your pleas for Taco Bell for dinner. He makes sure you both understand how soundly he disapproves of you eating “such garbage” and you and Dave munch happily on shitty, fast food tacos as he pulls into the parking lot of a nearby Holiday Inn.  
Your sleeping arrangements are the same as last night's, though the room you share with Dave is much bigger and definitely a lot nicer. Exhausted, you change into your pyjamas quickly as Dave again locks himself in the bathroom. You worry for a brief moment if he might be sick.  
You had been hoping to catch a quick shower before bed, but after half paying attention to Adult Swim for about twenty minutes with no sign of Dave, you give up and settle into bed for another long day of driving. 

_ _ _ 

You wake to the sound of screaming. It's terrifying, wrenching you out of sleep disoriented and gasping. As you come more to your senses, you can sort out your surroundings better, though everything is dark and blurred. The horrified shouting sounds again from your left and you hear the thrashing of bedclothes. Still startled and panting, you push yourself up out of bed frantically, shove your glasses on your face. You stagger across the small divide between your two beds as Dave continues to scream bloody murder. He's writhing and tossing when you get close enough to lean over him, flailing out blindly when you try to put your hand on his shoulder. 

“Stop! Stop!” The desperation in his voice, the shouting is enough to drive you fully awake. The sight of your friend in the grip of a nightmare is terrifying, but you manage to get both hands on his arms so he can't hit you, and shake him.  
”Dave,” you try frantically as his thrashing turns to struggling in your hold, his shouts become horrified moans. “Dave, wake up!” 

After a few more jostles, his eyes fly open. He looks up at you, no recognition in his face and gut-wrenching fear in his eyes. With an awful gasp, he tries to shove you off and you allow it. Satisfied he's at least awake, you move back to give him space, watch quietly as he whips around in confusion, trying to get his bearings. His eyes lift to find you standing at his bedside and his face fills with despair. You edge towards him carefully, easing onto the side of his bed when he curls in on himself. Carefully, you venture a touch on his back, rubbing it soothingly as he huddles bent over his knees, hands fisted against his forehead and breath ragged. 

“You all right, man?” you ask gently, feeling some of the tension in his shoulders draining under your palm. Dave nods silently. “You need me to get you anything?”  
”Bag,” Dave croaks, accent thick, before clearing his throat and clarifying, “My bag...please.” 

You push yourself off the bed, giving Dave a little squeeze on the shoulder as you go. Behind you, you hear him inhale deeply as you rummage for his knapsack. When you hand it off, his eyes are downcast and his fingers trembling, but he thanks you and asks stiltedly for some water, as if ashamed of the request. In the most assuring tones you can manage, you tell him of course, and head off into the bathroom. As you run the tap, you take a moment to breathe out your jitters from being so frighteningly awoken.  
Returning to the main room, glass in hand, you see Dave with half his bag turned out on his bed. He's shaking a pill bottle out into his hand, and you wince a little when you hear him chewing his medicine. Leaving the fanlight on but closing the bathroom door to a crack, you cross the floor. You sit beside Dave at a comfortable distance and hand over his water, and though he thanks you softly, his eyes fail to meet yours. As he sucks down his drink, you idly pick up the pills he's discarded. 

“Dave, I didn't know you had to take medicine...” you trail off as you turn the bottle over in your fingers and read the label. You've heard the name of this stuff on the news before, in scare stories about new drug abuse trends, and you frown in concern because you're pretty sure Dave doesn't know the “Colin Hayes” this prescription is made out to. The pill bottle is snatched out of your hand, making you start a little and look up.  
”They help me sleep,” Dave mutters quickly, his voice low and his eyes still avoiding yours furtively. In the half light of the hotel room, the shadows under them make them look sunken and hollow. He looks up when you don't respond, eyes darting away from the worry in yours, and shoves the bottle back into his knapsack. It rattles with the sound of more pills and you wonder how much is in there. Dave lets the bag slide to the floor, slumping a little and scratching the side of his face.  
”Look, I don' wanna keep y'up, bro,” his voice is thick and he blinks slowly, fingers still worrying at his cheek as if he forgot they were there. “I know both'a y'all got a lotta drivin' ahead'a ya t'morrow.” 

You reach out and gently clasp Dave's wrist, pulling his hand away from almost obsessively scratching his face. He jumps, yanks out of your loose hold in shock. The eyes that dart back up to yours look anxious, almost betrayed, slightly unfocussed. 

“You sure you're okay?” you ask carefully. “The sounded like a pretty nuts nightmare.”  
”It's fine,” Dave scoots away from the edge of the bed where you're sitting, face tilted down and tone snippy. “It's fine, everything's fine.”  
A minor surge of annoyance swells and ebbs in chest and you exhale it with a deep breath. “Well, if you _actually_ wanna talk about it,” you have difficulty masking the strain in your voice. “I'm willing to listen. I am supposed to be your friend, y'know.” 

Behind you, Dave flops onto his back and hums non-committally. You twist halfway to get a good look at him. His wavy hair is fanned around his head, the only part of him catching the orange-gold light that slips through the hotel curtain from the streetlamps outside. The rest is cast in shadow, all hollow pits and notches where his bones stick out. He's disconcertingly skinny, wasn't kidding when he talked about being small for his age. He's wearing that oversized shirt you picked him up in again, and it hangs in folds around his tiny frame. When he inhales, you can see his stomach hollow underneath its fabric, and everything about it seems the antithesis of Dave's sense of style.  
His breathing is shallow, and he would seem asleep, but for his hand almost absentmindedly stroking his face. You don't really understand why, but the whole scene makes you sort of sad. With a sigh, you push yourself to your feet, earning you a mildly disoriented grunt from Dave. You cross the small space between your two beds and crawl under your sheets, settling on your side and watching Dave until his soft, intermittent little humming noises go silent and his hand stills.


	3. Chapter 3

“Daaaaave, c'mon!”

You screw up your face and blink a little, disoriented. A finger smooshes into your cheek and you crack your eyes grouchily. John is leaning over the back of the couch and grinning down at you. There's a throw draped over you and your glasses are missing. You squint up at John, hoping you're effectively channelling just how disgruntled you are through your eyes. He keeps smiling at you, digging in the finger he's got in your cheek and pushing himself into a stand.  
“Dad's gonna be here in half an hour to drive us to the airport,” he tells you as he heads towards the stairs. You groan and use the back of the couch to haul yourself up into a sit. Honestly, you're surprised you managed to fall asleep.

It's been three days since you got to Washington and sleeping has been a bit of an ordeal. You've been set up with an air mattress on the floor of John's room, and while having another person around makes falling asleep a little easier than trying to do so in an empty apartment, after your embarrassing little freak-out Sunday night you're remiss to let yourself sleep at all. Not to mention, actually sleeping around John has been an...adventure. He still largely maintains his freakish, early-rising schedule, although you've been doing your best to break him of that habit. Where you're accustomed to not being up before noon if you can help it, he is of the opinion that ten is sleeping in. Now that his Prankster's Gambit has gone into overdrive having you in the flesh, you've so far suffered disappearing shades, boxers finding their way onto your head, and an attempt to put your hand in warm water. Sharpie dicks were most certainly next. But when you woke up with John's hand around your wrist and sort of reflexively smacked his glasses off his face, you think the message got across about fucking with you in your sleep.  
Nevertheless, you haven't been doing a lot of sleeping if you can help it. It's a strange change from spending most of last month barely conscious. The embarrassingly concerned look on John's face when you unthinkingly took an orange in front of him has made you self-conscious about taking any pills around him. With the guy following you every waking moment like an excited puppy, it's made dosing a small ordeal, and cutting back has left you on edge and insomniatic. Being around John has provided an odd sort of counterbalance. 

Hanging out with him feels complicated. His presence is calming, puts you at ease, yet when you start feeling yourself letting your guard down around him, your mind gets away from you. That old longing creeps back in, exacerbated by his physical presence, and as soon as you notice it, you shut down. You don't get to think about your friend that way any more – it's disgusting, you're disgusting, you're a pervert and you should be ashamed.  
It's hard to remind yourself of this, though, when he's so physical all the time. You've grown so used to only getting physical contact violently. Strifing, getting your ass beat, being shaken or smacked – you can handle that shit. It's the hugging that gets to you. Bro doesn't hug you. If you really dig, you can maybe recall a time when you were really little and he used to hold you in his lap, clinging to you and shaking. But that always just scared you into silence, and thinking about it makes your stomach hurt. It's definitely incomparable to the way John grins and slings his arm around your shoulders and folds you against his chest, warm and strong. 

You didn't sleep last night; you couldn't. You'd watched informercials numbly down in the living room until the sound of Mr. Egbert's morning routine trickled down from the bathroom upstairs and you'd scampered back to John's room. His dad still makes you nervous, puts you on edge yet intrigues you. It's disturbing and you refuse to think about it, push it to the back of your mind instead. John had been surprised to see you up, but pleased nonetheless. Well after his dad left for work, he had hauled you back downstairs and got both of you set up on the couch. Exhausted, you fell asleep tucked against his chest while he sat intently watching some awful action flick the rest of the world had the sense to forget years ago. 

“Are you up?” John shouts as he thunders back down the stairs. You push off the throw and scowl at him. He answers with a cheeky grin. “You smell like an armpit,” he tells you. “You really gonna meet Jade smelling like an armpit?”  
”It's your fuckin' armpit stonk, bro,” you sneer, voice still coarse with sleep. Casting about for your shades, you find them respectfully folded on the nearby end table and jam them onto your face. “Th'fuck's with trying to smother me in your matronly embrace?”  
”Dude, I didn't ask you to start drooling all over my tits – I feel violated, honestly,” he quips back rather quickly, and you can't help but feel a little proud of him for getting better at keeping up with you. Maybe you're just getting slower. He bats the side of your head lightly.  
”Twenty minutes, man,” he reminds you, ducking into the kitchen.

You stop by John's room to grab your bag before hopping in the shower. It's still gross – you still feel gross and slimy and tainted every time you're naked, so you rinse off quickly to minimise the length of time you have to stay so. If you focus all your attention on the tiles in front of your face, you can clean yourself blindly, silently thankful for the washcloth Mr. Egbert provided and the safe barrier it keeps between your hands and actually having to touch the rest of your body. By the time you're out of the bathroom – dried, dressed, and comfortably sedated – John and his dad are waiting for you downstairs. 

The drive to the airport is uneventful. It's a little over an hour with evening traffic and John doesn't try to engage you much more than the occasional excited outburst about meeting Jade. Not even twenty minutes into the trip and you feel your dose pushing the constant anxious buzz his dad gives you to the back of your mind. With the feeling at little more than a low hum, you keep your eyes pinned on Mr. Egbert.  
Part of you stays on constant alert around him. You don't know why specifically. It could be his obvious class, his new model car and his nice clothes that remind you of someone else you assumed was rich. It could be that you're not used to being around adults. Bro's bar bunnies certainly don't count as adults – shit, usually they're closer to your age than his. More importantly, though, you're pretty sure the only other full-grown white guy you've actually been around was Bro himself. It makes you uneasy. You keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, to fuck up in some way and get your ass beat. 

Yet John's dad seems to have infinite fucking patience for you, even when you slip up and cuss in front of him. That too makes you nervous, not knowing what your limits are, when you'll inevitably wind up pushing him. Yet it's also oddly comforting. He's so kind and generous and thoughtful. He has nothing but warm smiles for you and John alike, smiles that crease lines into the corners of his eyes and the edges of his mouth, well-worn from frequency.  
He treats you like family, though you've only known him for five days. He feeds you and lets you sleep under his roof, asking nothing in return. You're unaccustomed to getting food whenever you're hungry, being able to eat until you're full. Yet he's made sure you sit every meal with him and John, even spared you a concerned look the first time he saw you in form-fitting clothes that failed to hide how skinny you are.  
He even respects your boundaries. When you mumbled uncomfortable responses to his questions about your home life over dinner, he stopped asking. After you flinched away from the hearty pat on the back he tried giving you Monday evening, he's made no further moves to touch you. 

Another part of you regrets that action. You watch him and John palling around, all friendly shoulder slugs and hands clapped on the back and warm embraces. It helps you understand where John gets all his touchy-feely shit and it sort of makes you wish for the same treatment. Even though touching still sort of scares you, you think that if it was Mr. Egbert it might be okay. He's warm and caring and you've never had that; you want that. You want someone who acts like they give a shit, who treats you like a son, not a pain in their ass. You've never been so selfish before – you've always known that Bro does what's best for you, does what he needs to make you strong, keep you in line. You know he gave up so much for you, and you're grateful, but seeing John and his dad interact makes you think of how things might have been. It makes you wish you'd had someone who made you feel worthwhile, someone who actually stuck around when you needed him most. 

You distract yourself from digging too deeply into the depressing realm of potential paths that will never branch into the future, focussing instead on studying Mr. Egbert's profile. You had plenty of time to do so on the way up from Texas, but it's still enjoyable recreation. Everything about him is strong and masculine, from the cut of his jaw, to his broad shoulders. He has wide, powerful-looking hands, surprisingly well-worn for an office flunky. You imagine how they would feel, heavy draped over your shoulders or firm while squeezing your arm. You catch your mind drifting towards imagining the feel of his fingers gripping your hips and hate yourself for it.  
You're fucked in the head, it's official. The first man you've met whom you actually wish was your father and you can't decide whether you want to run away, win his approval, or let him fuck you. Thoroughly disgusted with yourself, you turn away to watch Seattle roll past your window. The drugs in your system keep you from really flipping nuts and you remind yourself that you don't actually have it that bad. Bro's done his best for you and searching somewhere else for the family you've never deserved is a disservice to his efforts. 

_ _ _ 

The airport is packed when the three of you finally make it in from short-term parking. All around you are people on cell phones, waving goodbyes, not looking where they're going. You're acutely thankful for the shades, eyes darting every which way, scanning the crowd for threats. In a way, you almost regret having taken anything – your senses are muffled and it's hard to focus on your surroundings. John is saying something about Jade's arrival gate, but you can't concentrate on his words and just nod when it seems appropriate. Someone jostles you in passing and your head whips around to track them, switch to the next nearest group, the next. 

You haven't been out in public, in a major crowd, in over a month. Your mind is trying to wade through the drugged haze you've mired it in, keep your senses sharp and hyper-alert. It's doing a pretty shit job of it and reacting with that same thick, welling sensation you got whenever you tried going back into your room. There's too many people here. The hairs on the back of your neck stand up – you can feel yourself being watched. You don't know where they are, but you know someone's there. Any one of these people could be watching you, following you, waiting to strike. In any minute you're going to be groped or grabbed from behind; some faceless stranger is going to catch you and drag you away without John or his father ever noticing.  
A hand slips into yours and you nearly shout in terror, just barely managing to convulsively choke down the impulse when you realise it's only John. 

“C'mon,” he beams at you, pulling you along behind him. “Jade just messaged me that the plane's deboarding. She's gotta get through customs, then she'll meet us down at the baggage claim so we don't have to go through security bullshi- ...stuff. Security stuff.”  
He casts a wary glance back to see if his dad caught his slip. Mr. Egbert appears conspicuously oblivious, following the two of you at a comfortable distance. He gives you an amiable smile when he sees you looking and you spin back around to watch where John's leading you. Another person, half-paying attention, nearly knocks into your shoulder – you don't know how long you can handle this place. 

The two of you settle into seats nearer the glass-walled front of the airport, across from the baggage claim. John checks his phone periodically, a little obsessively, which does nothing to calm the rolling surges of panic that keep rippling through you. Nothing you do helps you keep an eye on everyone, all at once. At least sitting down your back doesn't feel quite as exposed. But you still hunker down, try to make yourself as inconspicuous as possible. Sheer, baseless horror is still gnawing as the edges of your mind, and you think you might be coming down because it keeps getting sharper, harsher. Time crawls by and your eyes flick over everyone who comes remotely close to you. Slowly, barely aware you're doing it, you edge closer and closer to John as the minutes scrape past. After about twenty, you're pretty much curled up against his shoulder. Everyone who passes you is looking at you, sneering because they can tell how disgusting you are, itching to hit you or grab you for daring to show your face amongst actual human beings. Everything is muffled, but for the ringing in your ears and the heavy, ragged sound of your own breath. Again, you get the sense that you've disconnected, tapped out of the reality where John and his dad are talking beside you about useless unimportant shit you don't understand; where the towering glass and steel walls around you aren't merely means of cutting off your escape; where people simply pass you by without leering at you, knowing how sick you are. You feel dizzy, muffled, the sound of the crowd droning out until all that remains is the ringing and buzzing and heavy panting. 

A bright, high-pitched cheer finally cuts across your senses.  
”John!” 

Your head snaps up in time to see Jade barrelling towards the three of you, just as she cries out your name as well. You knew her hair was long from videochat, but her webcam clearly didn't do it justice. It streams out behind her as she runs, long as her waist at least, shaggy and so beautifully straight. John springs to his feet and the two of them collide as if they were re-enacting some cheesy romance movie. For all you know, John probably is, because he actually uses Jade's momentum to lift her off her feet. The sound she makes is somewhere between a shriek and a giggle, and she kicks he legs excitedly in his hold.  
Even dressed modestly, in a T-shirt and ankle-length, hand-made skirt, you can aesthetically appreciate the fact that she's totally bangin'. The arms she has wrapped around John's shoulders are athletically fit. When he sets her down, she grins at him with adorably crooked teeth and readjusts her glasses. Her skin is rich brown, the same tone a John's but shades darker, and she's got a picture-perfect hourglass figure, all hips. You half wonder if John got a boner with those bombs she's smuggling pressed up against him and kind of want to shoot yourself in the head for the thought.  
Jade whips around to face you, still smiling wide, and you freeze up. Not to leave you out, she drags you into an equally warm hug, arms strong around you. Your chin barely tucks over her shoulder – she's taller than you. Goddammit. 

“You're shaking,” she says softly, private enough that John probably didn't hear. You squeeze her a little tighter.  
”I'm not,” you tell her in an undertone. You totally are, you just hadn't noticed until someone else touched you.  
”Is everything okay?” she asks, pulling out of the hug. “I haven't seen you online in weeks.” 

You nod quietly, not looking at her but certain she can't tell through the shades. Everything isn't okay. They're making a scene, someone's going to notice you and take you away and hurt you. But you can't tell her that. You have to just let her give you a concerned look and have her attention pulled away by John dragging her off to find her luggage. You stand with your back to the open windows at the front of the airport, wringing the hem of your shirt and cringing a little when you feel the presence of John's dad standing behind you.


	4. Chapter 4

Rose is due in from New York the day after Jade. You don't know how you're supposed to go back out to the airport.  
Jade's off-sync sleep schedule and exuberant energy kept all of you up late last night. She has this goofy laugh that kicks off with a shrill sort of yelp and descends quickly into giggle-snorting. The best comparison you can come up with is coyote laughing, though that doesn't quite do it justice, and it's so fucking cute. Around two in the morning, however, John's dad politely informed him that it was time for all of you to go to bed, as she was keeping him up. You spent the rest of the night staring at the ceiling in the dark, silently terrified, certain that he was going to change his mind and come back to whup all three of you. When John and Jade woke up again around noon, you were still freaking out.

Despite her access to the internet, Jade keeps getting ridiculously excited about everyday shit. She kept bouncing in her seat on the drive from the airport. John had had to show her how to use her seatbelt, and the whole drive back to the house it was all John's dad could do to keep it on her, while she complained loudly about how uncomfortable it was across her boobs.  
While John makes pancakes, she berates his range for being a “ridiculous waste of electricity.” She completely spazzes over breakfast itself as John cracks up in disbelief of her never having had bacon before. He gets her to try some fruit snacks later in the afternoon, which she promptly spits out, railing at him for trying to feed her plastic. The two of them throw the brightly-coloured gummies back and forth like bickering siblings. Sitting on the other end of the sofa, you watch them with mild amusement, though the edge is starting to creep back in. 

All three of you eat a late lunch – John prepares ham sandwiches that actually have shit like lettuce and real cheese on them – sitting cross-legged on the floor. As if to punctuate the meal, the sound of John's dad pulling into their driveway comes just as you finish eating. You jump as the feeling of being caught in the act shoots up your spine, and bolt up to John's room as casually as possible. Which is not very, apparently, because you hear a burst of Jade's laughter follow you, accompanied by John's call of, “Dude, what the fuck?”  
From downstairs you can hear a steady stream of sounds. The front door opens and closes, there's footsteps, the shutter of the closet door, voices talking. You flop down on your make-shift bed with your bag in hand. A flush of embarrassment burns your face and anxiety shortens your breath. You haven't slept since the last time you had to be at the airport. You feel a little nauseous, a lot disoriented, and you're still not sure how you're supposed to deal with being out in public again. The thunder of running footsteps beats up the stairs. Just as you clutch your bag into your lap, the rattle it emits an almost comforting reminder, John's head pops in through the door. 

“Dad's gonna be ready in five,” he tells you, frowning a little when he no doubt sees the sudden tension his words place on your shoulders. “You all right dude?”  
You swallow thickly, force out a nod, but can't quite muster words. John slips into his room, closing the door softly, face fixed with that same aggravatingly concerned look as Sunday night. You are failing so fucking hard at keeping your cool this week.  
”You sure?” Fuck, you wish he would just leave you alone. “You look kinda sick.”  
”Fine,” you manage to choke out. “I'm...fine, let's go.” 

You force yourself to your feet. You can do this. It's only going out – you won't take anything cuz then you'll be able to keep an eye on your surroundings, and even if John's dad makes you nervous, you should be getting over it anyway. You just need to get over yourself. It's just going out, just being around people, just being exposed. You can buck the fuck up and deal with it. You're fine. Maybe a little dizzy. 

“Whoa, holy shit dude!” John's voice sounds shocked and distant. Strong arms are wrapped around you and you don't remember them getting there. It's like time did an odd little hiccup and deposited you in this awkward hold that's supporting most of your weight. You realise the chest you've got your face mushed into is John's when it rumbles in time with his slightly panicked voice.  
“Okay, I think you need to lay down,” he's telling you anxiously, grappling with the brunt of your weight because apparently your legs have fucked right off. He smells clean and his arms are stronger than you expected and you hate yourself the moment both these thoughts cross your mind. You still feel kind of dizzy.  
”C'mon,” John is speaking softly, trying to corral you around the air mattress. Getting the kid gloves is humiliating as fuck, but you can't really blame him. Apparently the whole swooning, southern belle shtick isn't very attractive when you're some bony little guy with an attitude problem. You do manage to mumble out something about “the vapours,” which nets you a terse, strained laugh from Egbert. He squeezes the hand he's got at your waist and you can feel his mouth move against your scalp when he talks. Both make your stomach do funny, shameful things. 

“Just use my bed, it's more comfortable,” he's telling you, and the world is tilting, you feel like you're falling again, sinking. In fear, you clutch where he draped your arm around his shoulder, but then his smell rises up and envelopes you. It's soft and a little cool as you sink into it. John's propped above you as he deposits you on his bed and for a brief moment you entertain the notion of wrapping both arms around his shoulders, pressing your face against his sparsely exposed skin, finding his mouth with yours. He slides his arms from around you and you can't help but feel it's because he sensed your awful intent. In his physical absence you do your damnedest not to smell his sheets, or buck your hips up towards his retreating figure like the slut you are.  
”I'll get you some water, 'kay?” John squeezes your shoulder warmly and you can't look at him because he's so kind and trusting and you are just the worst person in the world. “Just...take it easy. We'll be back in a couple hours.”  
You nod and hear the retreat of his footsteps. John's bedroom door opens and closes. You shut your eyes, imagine how ashamed your Bro would be if he could see you now. 

_ _ _ 

The sound of your phone upstairs is just barely audible from the Egbert's pantry. For about twenty minutes after John left with Jade and his dad you laid in his bed, trying to get your head together. There was a smooth transition from the dizzying disorientation you'd laid down with, to a nauseous sort of creeping paranoia that set in as the realisation that you were totally alone impressed itself upon you. Alone wasn't exactly the problem. You're used to alone. But not outside of the apartment, not in an unfamiliar house. You weren't even sure of how many entrances the Egberts' place had. There was no way to know which direction an attack was going to come from.  
In a fit of neurotic fear, you'd forced yourself out of bed. You'd still been a little light-headed as you made your way downstairs. Floor-level entrances were top priority. You'd checked the front door, the living room windows, the study windows, the kitchen windows. You were just testing the lock on the back door in the pantry when your phone went off. 

From the pantry it's barely discernible. Just a muffled disturbance in the vast silence of the empty house. However, as you make your way out into the living room, head for the stairs, it becomes clearer. You freeze beside the sofa, a slither of cold fear slipping into your gut. Before the really meaningful levels of panic set in, you have a moment of lucidity to appreciate the hilarity of some god-awful Ke$ha song sounding this fucking terrifying. 

There's only one person you take the time to find the worst possible ringtones for. If you don't, he'll reprogram it to his liking, and you can only hear high-pitched girls singing about “Big adventure” and “Sharing kindness” so many times before it stops being funny. You know he won't stop calling until you answer – you also know the longer you make him wait, the more angry he will be with you.  
It's been six days since you left Texas. You wonder if Bro was actually gone that long, or if he's just been too drunk to notice you were gone until now. Pushing through the leaden feeling in your legs, you take the stairs two at a time. 

It takes every ounce of control within you to keep your voice steady when you answer your phone with a flat, “Bro.”  
”Where th'fuck's my shit?” You recognise the hard, slightly irritated tone in your brother's voice not as the one that comes before being handed a royal ass-beating, but as precursor to being locked in your room for who knows how long. It's the tone that comes after you've been whupped, the tone that tells you you're such a fuck-up Bro doesn't even know how to set you right. You know he knows the answer to his question. He's just asking to make you squirm.  
”Where th'fuck are you?” he asks after leaving you twisting for long enough. You swallow. He probably also knows the answer to that question. He's toying with you. He knows where John lives; if he wanted, he could easily come drag you home. But you know he doesn't care that much. You're almost certain he would be happy to have you gone. The only reason he's even calling now is because you stole from him and he wants you to know just what an asshole you are for it. You draw a raggedy breath and hope your voice doesn't sound too pathetic.”  
”Um...Washington,” your answer comes out small and timid, making you wince. Bro doesn't respond for the longest time, simply lets you stew in shame and self-hate. After a cold, silent stretch of staring at your bony, tired-looking knuckles, you get a reply.  
”You're a'ungrateful, selfish little shit,” Bro tells you with absolutely zero emotion. “I hope y'know that, _Dave._ ” 

His end of the line goes dead, leaving you staring sightlessly ahead of yourself. Your name is reserved for those times when you have really and truly fucked up. Only when Bro is so disgusted with you that he won't even acknowledge your relation with all the condescending, endearing little nicknames he gives you. There have been so few times he's called you by your first name that sometimes it takes talking to your friends to really confirm you actually even have a name.  
But when Bro says it...every time before has been accompanied by the same drunken tirade, the same list of proofs that you're a greedy, self-absorbed little brat. Every time before, Bro has told you how much better his life would be without you, how he should have just left you behind, how he could have had a future without you around, how he gave up so much for your worthless ass. Without him around to deliver the usual snarled jeers, you don't know what to do. In the absence of Bro's voice, your mind goes over the usual litany – you're useless, selfish, an asshole, ungrateful. 

Your phone slips from your shaking fingers when you rise on unsteady feet, bounces on the air mattress. The house around you is empty. You feel alone and tired and old, old, old right down to the core of your heart. You ache to the marrow of your bones and you want to stop feeling anything at all. With numb fingers, you find your pack, fish out its contents and feed yourself three yellows. It's probably nowhere near enough to kill you. But as you flop back down onto John's bed – surrounded by the smell of him you would have found precious even a month ago – you think that you wouldn't mind falling asleep and never having to wake back up to the knowledge of your worthlessness, or to the memories clawing away at your brain. 

_ _ _ 

John is as chatty in person as you could have ever expected. The first thing out of his mouth, after he and Jade smother you in hugs, is how you didn't take nearly as long as Jade did yesterday. She punches his shoulder in retaliation and he cringes, rubbing the spot. You're not too surprised by the reaction. Jade was the first to spot you, hurtling down on you like an excited puppy, and her arms were slender and strong around you when she pulled you into a tight bear hug. Her hair was long, and soft, and smelled of earth – and when you curled your arms around her waist, they settled perfectly against the curve of her lower back.  
Of course, John killed the moment, elbowing Jade aside for his own rambunctious hug that left you patting your hair down straight once he released you. They both beam at you now, matching crooked teeth and broad grins reminding you why Dave has been known to refer to them as the “derp twins” in private conversation. Speaking of whom... 

“Where's Dave?” you ask, craning your neck to look past them. Where you expect to see your third friend hanging back shyly and prepared to pass it off as “cool,” instead there stands a middle-aged man watching your group. Though the faintest hints of fatigue touch the edges of his features, between the smart fedora covering his grey-flecked hair and the warm look gracing his face, you assume him to be John's adoptive father. Before you, however, a slight ripple of tension that passes through John in answer to your question arrests your attention. You hone your interest on the minor discomfort that flickers over his face, just before he shrugs it off. 

“He didn't come,” he tells you with a sort of forced nonchalance. “He was sick or something.”  
You narrow your eyes, already suspicious. It's been a month since you talked to Dave, and your last conversation with him wasn't exactly comforting. “Sick?”  
John rubs his neck uncomfortably. “I dunno,” he half laughs. “I don't think he's been sleeping very well since he got here – might be homesick or something.”  
”He's a lot quieter than I expected,” Jade adds musingly. You squint at John with further scrutiny. He's very obviously omitting some detail, and homesickness is the last thing you would think to accuse Strider of. If anything, you anticipated something like relief on his part, being so far from his brother. You purse your lips and peer at John sceptically, but he shrugs it off with a laugh and awkwardly announces that the three of you should go retrieve your luggage. It's fine, you suppose. After all, Dave is the easiest of your friends from which to coax answers. You'll just have to find out what's going on when you see him. 

In a fit of chivalry, John insists on carrying your bags. He belatedly introduces you to his father, who doffs his hat in polite response to your nod. You're led out with the lot of them to his waiting car, a modest hatchback into the rear of which you stow your luggage comfortably. Once everyone is situated, John's father eases out into Seattle's evening rush hour. 

Though nowhere near comparable to your occasional visits to the City, Seattle is charming in its austerity. There's a kind of uniform grey to it that you find calming, and an abundance of greenery that reminds you just a little of home. More entertaining on the drive, however, is Jade's energetic blustering in the front seat.  
It appears there is a seatbelt issue between her and John's father, no doubt established yesterday. There is an amusing cycle to her behaviour – it begins with a tense sort of stillness that slowly bubbles up into impatient fidgeting. Then, without warning, something outside her window will seize her attention so powerfully that she'll attempt to lean forward and press her face to the glass, only to be jerked to a stop by her belt strap. Thus begins a loud debate between her and John's father, as she attempts to wrestle off the offending restraint and he one-handedly blocks her efforts while chiding her sternly. Eventually, Mr. Egbert manages to settle Jade back down, and the pattern picks back up at the beginning. The whole display is terribly endearing, though you find yourself blushing a little under John's raucous laughter whenever she calls loud, oblivious attention to her breasts. 

The Egberts' neighbourhood is as neat and immaculately suburban as you might have imagined. John's house is quaint and simple, its generic, utilitarian design a sharp contrast to the sprawling, 60s-modern architecture of your own home. You love it. Every bit of the house seems cosy, and welcoming, and familial – a far cry from the cold sterility to which you're accustomed. As John and his father carry your things to the front door, you compare flights with Jade. Being dragged to and from innumerable conferences by your mother all your life, you've grown quite disenchanted with airplanes. There's a certain charm, however, in hearing the experience of a first-time flyer, especially when Jade so rapturously describes the sight of the Pacific Ocean, its beautiful blue expanse glittering far below her window. 

“Dave, we're back!” John shouts as you follow him into his house. He trundles towards the stairs, a suitcase in each hand, as his father leaves the rest of your luggage beside them and excuses himself to prepare dinner. John mounts the stairs, calling Dave's name again. The house seems remarkably quiet.  
As you and Jade tag along on John's heels, he informs you that his father has designated their guest room as yours to share. Though he explains that Mr. Egbert reasoned you girls deserve a bit more privacy than Dave, put up in John's room, you can't help but smirk a little. Were his father perhaps subtly trying to separate the four of you by gender for additional reasons, he has failed utterly in taking both yours and Strider's proclivities into account. John insists on bringing the rest of your luggage up, so you have a moment to take in your living arrangements for the next three months. 

All the rooms in John's house are smaller than you're used to, but you pay it no mind. Better modest and comfy than spacious and empty. It appears you're expected to share the sole queen bed in the room with Jade, a fact that sends your eyebrows racing up your forehead. The bedclothes are in wild disarray from Jade's previous night here, sending your mind wandering just a little as your eyes roam about the rest of the room for distraction. Actually, Jade seems to have settled right in for having only a day's head start on you. Her single, massive suitcase is turned out, its contents – mostly clothes – strewn over the floor. A pair of microplush Squiddle dolls are magnetically tangled together beside one pillow and there is one _fancy_ looking laptop charging atop an endtable.  
Jade catches you scrutinising the bed situation. She tells you that she doesn't mind sleeping on the floor if you think sharing a bed is too awkward, but just as you start to protest in reassurance, John comes blustering into the room. Dave still hasn't made an appearance and, as John sets your last suitcase down, he lets it be known how much this fact displeases him.  
”C'mon, I bet his lazy ass is asleep or something,” he says only slightly laughingly. With a wave, he beckons you and Jade along after him, pausing a moment to point out the bathroom before turning down the hallway towards his room. 

Rays of the setting sun slip through the slats of the Venetian blinds drawn over his window. They're making the inside of John's room seem cave-like and stuffy. With a huff, he edges around the air mattress on the floor to pull them up with a snap. You notice the little huddled mass on his bed for the first time when it jolts a little in response to the sudden change of light. A hint of unease edges in on you.  
”Dude, c'mon, get up,” John chuckles, crossing over to his bed. He finds a shoulder within the mass, shakes it and rolls it back a little. A sharp gasp answers, sending a ripple of anxiety down your spine and making Jade jump, John hesitate.  
”C'mon, man, Rose is here,” John's laugh feels more forced this time, as he shakes the shoulder under his palm. Incoherent mumbles, tinged with a hint of panic that makes you cringe slightly, worm their way out of the tangle of blankets. The jostling from John is enough to finally roll him onto his back, and your first sight of Dave in over six weeks knocks the wind out of you. 

Most jarring is the visible loss of weight. Fine, sharp cheekbones look almost gaunt where he used to be babyfaced. His neck looks scrawny and, even wrapped in blankets, his shoulders seem much too bony. Lack of sleep is apparent in the sunken, lined shadows around his eyes. A sort of waxy sheen covers his skin, already sallow enough to match John's, when he should be only a bit lighter than Jade. His lips look dry and abused.  
John leans over Dave, still trying to cajole him awake, but his grogginess seems like more than simply fatigue. He tries to push John away from him and there's a sloppy, disoriented touch to his gestures. Sickeningly, it reminds you of your mother on her worst days. You recognise the weak, ineffectual way in which he bats at John's hands as the motions of someone too intoxicated to understand that their movements are anything but the reassurance they intend for them to be. The sight makes your stomach clench. 

Soft grunts or moans accompany each push, and though John doesn't seem to notice, you can hear the hint of desperation in each one. Dave's eyelids flutter, slip open, and his eyes roll for a second, trying to find focus. A sudden, particularly forceful thrust and a wordless shout finally makes John rear back away from him. Bewilderment is stamped clearly on his face as he stares down at Dave.  
Another twinge grips your stomach as you watch Dave's eyes roll wildly, unable to focus, pupils overblown. His breath comes in keening little pants and there's a hopeless sort of fear clinging to his features that you recognise. It looks like vulnerability, and loss of control, and the horror of being trapped, and with a slow, sinking chill, it all comes together.  
A very familiar sensation of skin-crawling dread coils and beds down in your gut. It's the kind that makes you swallow and makes your thighs clench reflexively. The kind that shudders and churns your stomach in the presence of its kin. John leans down to grip Dave's shoulder, to still him, and the startled gasp that wrenches out of your throat mirrors his exactly. 

“Don't!” you manage to spit out as John jerks away from Dave a second time. He twists around to look at you quizzically. Under both his and Jade's confused stares, you wet your lips nervously.  
”Don't touch him,” you tell John, voice more tremulous than you would like. He half scoffs, though his face is twisted with concern. Dave groans wordlessly on the bed beside him.  
”Rose, c'mon,” John's laugh is one of someone trying to mask their anxiety. “It's not like he's got the plague – he's just got a fever or something.”  
”He's not-” you stop yourself, try to collect your thoughts. “He's not sick, John.”  
Your friend cocks his head just slightly, in confusion. You close your eyes with a sigh. “Look, just...let me deal with Strider, okay?” you entreat. John gives you a cross frown and you raise your hands in placation. “You're right that he's not well, but let me talk to him first.”  
John looks vexed, turning his gaze from you to Jade in hopes of support. She merely shrugs beside you. John huffs.  
”Well, he's been weird since we picked him up, but he hasn't said shit to me, so good luck, I guess,” he says with a bit of a bite, crossing the room and moving past you. “C'mon, Jade, let's see if dad's got dinner ready yet.” 

John exits the room in a snit, with Jade in tow. Honestly, you understand why he may be frustrated – knowing Dave, he's been playing the part of the silently tormented without any explanation to his best friend. A mournful little grunt comes from the bed, and you feel your hands trembling, and you decide you don't really give a shit about how John feels right now. He can be as resentful as he wants – this isn't about him.  
You slowly approach the bed on shaky legs. When you kneel beside it, your knee hits something that John missed stepping upon. The familiar rattle of pills skitters away from you and you snatch up the rolling bottle, turning it upright for inspection. It's an illegitimate prescription for Percocet. You look back to Dave in concern.  
His head has lolled a little, but he's still letting out little whimpering moans, his eyelids are still fluttering, trapped in limbo between not being asleep and actually being conscious. Tentatively, you reach out to push his bangs back from his brow. A concerned grunt answers you and Dave forces his eyes open. You can tell he's still not quite seeing you. His are the unfocussed, overly dilated eyes of someone high out of their mind. Its painful to look at and you smooth your thumb across his forehead, trying to soothe him. 

As you stroke Dave's hair, you rack your memories for tells. The last time you spoke with him was at the very beginning of June. He went dead silent after that; it scared you until John assured you he'd gotten an email explaining his brother had grounded him. Why did it scare you? Your last conversation...Bro was hurting him. You already knew that. John might take Dave's glibness about it at face value, and Jade may not have the context to get it, but you understood what was going on. You wanted to do something about it – you had tried to convince Dave to do something about it. That was your last conversation, but there was something else. You had voiced false suspicions of sexual abuse to lure him into admission. It had worked, but he was more defensive than you had anticipated. There was something else...someone else. Someone else asked if Dave was being molested by his brother. Someone else was interested in Dave's home life, and then he'd dodged the subject. Someone was prying, and then Dave went silent for a month. You told him to tell you if anything happened and he disappeared, lost weight, started popping pills. 

You chew your lower lip and look down at your friend in concern. The steady brush of your fingertips over his hair has eased his eyes back shut. His lips have ceased issuing soft, despairing noises. He'd woken as if from a nightmare. He'd acted like he was afraid of being touched. You grip the pill bottle in your fist and promise yourself you'll get him to confess what happened the first moment you can get him alone. 

_ _ _ 

It's stupid-fucking-o'clock in the morning and John is trying to drag you to church. You can't possibly conceive of why, other than maybe he wants to subject you to the same crushing boredom he endures. Or torture. See, you don't really know what church is like, because you've never been – a point which you keep trying to impress upon John, with little success. 

“Egbert, bro, seriously,” you're still resolutely planted in bed, trying to make John see reason. The smell has faded out, but there's still a small bit of comfort for you to find in Bro's old tee. You've taken to wearing it as pyjamas, and at the moment you are deadpanning up at your best friend in nothing more than the shirt, your boxers, and a swaddle of borrowed blankets. Said friend is leaning in the frame of his doorway, half grinning and wearing a button-up t-shirt that's tucked into his jeans like a complete doofus. The girls are milling behind him – Jade in a very pretty, but entirely too fancy ruffled, blue dress, and Rose hugging a black bathrobe around her wiry frame. 

“Y'don't want me there, man,” you try explaining levelly. “I'd burst into flames, or start speakin' in eldrich tongues,” you hear Rose snicker softly, “or, fuck, I dunno, god his fine-ass self would show up and be all, 'hey man, we can't have this much swag goin' on in my house! Bitches'll be gettin' all confused 'bout who they're here to worship.'”  
John fixes you with a flat look before rolling his eyes. “Dude, c'mon.”  
”I'm tellin' ya, bro,” you insist, “they don't want me there.” 

Perplexingly, John brightens up at this, getting that look on his face that you've come to associate with imminent facepalming. “Nah, man,” he half laughs. “It's not like that. They're Episcopalian, not one of those hellfire churches. There's even some gay couples that come to mass, so, like, you wouldn't be left out or anything.”  
You are honestly too stunned to respond. Instead, you simply give John the hardest, most scrutinising look of bewilderment you can manage. John is actually so clueless that he answers with an excited expression, his face telling you that he genuinely thinks he's solved your dilemma. Rose's fingers close over his arm. 

“John, honey, I don't believe that is the issue at hand here,” she informs him gently. “And, quite frankly, I feel I may be in a similar situation as Dave.”  
”What?!” John rounds on her with a whine that would be significantly less endearing if you didn't have it so bad for him. “C'mon, Rose, not you too now!”  
”John, church isn't for everybody,” she tells him with this sweet smile of hers that you've always read as cynical, but which dupes John every time. “You wouldn't really ask me to participate in something which conflicts with my own faith, would you?” 

Rose's eyebrow twitches challengingly when she catches the sceptical squint you've got trained on her and you just _know_ she's meddling. She has that glint in her eye. There's no way she isn't up to something – she is a meddling fucking professional. She's even already managed to get her bossy on with John's dad.  
After Friday morning, when Jade woke up sicker than hell, Rose had dragged Mr. Egbert aside and told him that it was absolutely necessary for him to start accommodating vegan meals. At the very least, she'd insisted, he and John needed to stop shoving piles of meat, grease, and processed foods down Jade's throat on the daily. You'd been sitting on the sofa when this went down, watching John's dad in petrified horror, certain Rose was going to get the sass smacked right out of her. Instead, shockingly, Mr. Egbert flushed red with embarrassment, right to the tips of his ears. In hushed, apologetic tones he'd asked if Jade was all right. After conferring with Rose, he hurried upstairs to where the other girl had spent most of the day in bed, alternating between being violently ill and haranguing John along the lines of, “Why would you eat chicken period, though, John? Would you eat my period? Do you _like_ period blood, John?” 

Fun fact you learned from Friday: John is sicked out by the idea of period blood. 

Now you're watching Rose deftly bicker John out of the notion of subjecting the lot of you to two hours of talking about god. You would almost be grateful, but you know she _must_ have some ulterior motive. John caves when his dad calls him down to leave. He at least has Jade excited, and the two of them hurry downstairs. You catch Rose's calculating eye from the doorway. 

“You don't even have a faith,” you hiss at her under the thunder of John and Jades footsteps on the stairs.  
”Dave, please,” she says in mock offence, quirking a wry smile at you. “Just because I pay tribute to gods far older than the Abrahamic triumvirate.”  
”And who are all completely fictional,” you interject blandly. It garners you a slightly broader smirk.  
”Are you saying the Christian god isn't?”  
You snort and roll your eyes.  
”Don't tell it to John, it'll be worse than when I told him Santa wasn't real.”  
”Strider, nothing I could say would be worse than that,” she tells you in dead seriousness. “You weren't the one whose figurative shoulder he came to cry upon. It took me three hours to talk him down.”  
You stifle a grin. “Remember how he decided that if I was too cool for Christmas, he was too cool for Christmas too?”  
”And then he cried when his father hid all his presents and told him they weren't celebrating,” a twitch of a small smile tugs at Rose's mouth. More footsteps and general banging around come from the first floor, followed by John shouting, “Bye, jerks!” 

The two of you call out a response, and as soon as you hear the front door slam, you both break into soft laughter. After a bright, shared moment, Rose straightens and schools her expression into a more subdued smile, smoothing a lock of hair back. She looks at you warmly and you look down into your lap shyly.  
”If you get dressed, I'll go prepare breakfast,” she tells you. You look up to see her dig her hands into the pockets of her bathrobe and give her a nod. She turns away and heads for the stairs, leaving John's bedroom door open. You flop back onto the air mattress. 

With John out of the house, you can go about your morning a little more comfortably. You stretch languidly, not feeling self-conscious about anyone seeing your shirt ride up or your gross chicken legs sticking out of your boxers. There's a little bit of a tension headache lurking around your neck, but you don't have to worry about John seeing you go for your bag and pour out a blue to relieve it. Regardless of your privacy, you still change into your track pants under your covers – you may be alone, but that doesn't change still being disgusted by seeing yourself naked.  
Downstairs you can hear the clattering of pans and solitary movement. There's a reason you can relate most easily to Rose. You're both used to being alone with another person in the house. It's a feeling you think John will be lucky to never experience, and it's different, in a way, from Jade's total isolation. There's a very specific type of loneliness that comes from knowing the person you live with would be happier with you gone. Both you and Rose know how it feels to be invisible. 

Rose smiles dryly when she leaves the kitchen to see you lounging on the couch in track pants and your nightshirt. With a teasing, “That hardly counts,” she crosses over and hands you a plate of eggs and sausage. You take it from her graciously and watch as she settles down on the opposite end of the sofa with a cup of coffee and a couple plain slices of toast. Comfortable silence descends between the two of you as you eat, letting PBS run as an ambient distraction.  
Some regional interest show is running when Rose finally turns to you. 

“So, how have you been this past month?” she asks casually, and a nice, fat lump of ice settles in your stomach. Well, you were having a nice morning. You set your fork down in dejection.  
The question is loaded as all hell and it makes your mouth go dry. She's been saving this, you realise – she made a very specific point not to ask about how you were until she had you alone. You're fucked. 

“M'fine,” you grumble, looking down at your plate. You still have a few mouthfuls of eggs left, but they're pretty much a lost cause now. Rose sniffs and you can hear the disbelief in it.  
”Are you sure?” she asks conversationally. You really wish she didn't feel impelled to toy with her victims first. “No recent injuries? Surgery?”  
You scoff and roll your eyes. “I really look like I been in a hospital lately?” you sneer, looking forward instead of at her, for fear your face might betray your disinterested front.  
”No, you don't,” Rose hums thoughtfully. You hear an alarmingly familiar rattle from her end of the couch. _Fuck._ “Which is why I was curious as to what need you might have for these.” 

A furtive sideways glance confirms that she does, indeed, have a bottle of your yellows. You didn't even notice they were missing. Apparently you need to keep better track of your stash. Though she can't see it through your shades, you glare at Rose.  
”They help me sleep,” you tell her curtly, before going for a diversionary subject change. “Where'dja get those? You seriously been goin' through my stuff?”  
”Actually, they were on the floor beside where you were unconscious when I arrived from the airport,” she informs you, all calm and collected. “Do you truly need to be that chemically incapacitated to get a night's sleep?” 

Sometimes being cornered by Rose reminds you a lot of being cornered by Bro. There's no underlying threat of violence, of course, but she has that same knack for trapping you so that stubborn silence is your only defence. You always feel stupid for falling back on it – it's not like there isn't plenty of an answer in no response anyway. Rose sighs. You run your tongue over your teeth and and cross your arms. 

“Dave,” she says softly and fuck, she's tacking sympathetic. “You know you can trust in my confidence.  
You tuck your chin and suck your teeth, staying resolutely silent and face-forward.  
”I understand that you're unaccustomed to being forthcoming, but sometimes doing so is necessary.”  
You don't want to talk about this.  
”I won't think any less of you, whatever you may disclose.”  
And yet here you are.  
”But please, tell me what happened at the beginning of June.” 

With an irritate sniff, you lift your chin, grind your teeth. She's fucking perceptive, so of course she knows something's up. But until you have pinned down just exactly how much she's figured out, “Nothing.”  
”Bullshit.” That nice act sure dropped fast. There's an almost angry cut to Rose's voice that surprises you enough to look her direction. She's scowling at you, and when she sees you turn her way, she throws your pills in your lap.  
”I'm to believe you just woke up one morning and decided to start abusing narcotics then?” she snipes.  
”Don't be so fuckin' overdramatic, Lalonde,” you sneer back at her. “I told ya, they're t'help me sleep.”  
”Is that what your brother told you they were for?” she shoots back. You purse your lips and glare. “What prompted him to start shoving pills down your throat, Dave? What made him realise he had to stop acting like you don't exist?” 

You roll your eyes and look away again. Rose's tone mellows out as she continues.  
”Look, you may have John fooled, but I know for a fact that you've never been grounded in your life.” You hug your arms tighter to your chest. “What happened, Dave? I was genuinely worried when you disappeared offline, and now this?”  
She gestures to the bottle in your lap. You shrug her off. “I told ya: nothin'. Nothin's wrong. There's nothin' t'talk about.”  
”Don't insult my intelligence, Dave,” Rose says sternly and you really wish she'd stop swinging your name around like a weapon. “When even John is telling me you've been acting strange, there is obviously something wrong.”  
”Well, maybe I don't feel like talkin' 'bout it,” you snap defensively, garnering you a steely look.  
”Well, maybe you _should_ talk about it.”  
 _”No.”_

You lock eyes with Rose through your shades.  
”So bottling it up would be better?” she asks, a cynically mocking tone just faintly touching her voice. “How has that worked out so far? Your nightmares are worse, you've lost weight, John tells me you're getting sick.”  
”Y'don't know what you're talkin' 'bout, Rose.” She knows exactly what she's talking about – that's the problem. She's going to force the truth out of you whether you like it or not and you don't know if you can handle it. The prospect makes you feel cornered, nauseous. You've been doing everything in your power not to think about it, not to let it show, and here she is trying to claw it out of you. You don't want to tell her; you don't want anyone to know. But what you want doesn't matter. That should be clear to you by now. She won't even let you have the secret of it. 

“Don't I?” Rose's lip curls. “Ignoring it doesn't make it go away, Dave. You can pretend there's nothing wrong for as long as you wish, but that still won't make it true.”  
”Y'sure are talkin' a grip'a shit like y'know what's up, so why don't y'just come out'n say it, Lalonde?” you snap hostilely.  
”Because you need to talk about it yourself,” she counters, playing the level-headed part.  
”You're th'one fuckin' askin'!”  
”Fine! Who raped you?!” 

Dread punches you in the gut. Your mouth shuts down, seals shut, and you feel dizzying heat in your face. You falter, eyes dropping to the empty spot of sofa between Rose and yourself, as your lips do that pathetic downward twist.  
It hurts to hear someone else say it. It feels as if someone else putting it to words somehow makes it more real, takes away your ability to drug every memory out of your brain and act like not talking about it means it didn't happen. You cringe, twist your fingers into the fabric of your shirt as you hold yourself that much tighter. A lump clogs your throat and the almost angry look on Rose's face keeps your eyes pinned downward. 

“I don't know,” you answer honestly, your voice suddenly tiny and childish and making you feel just awful with how feeble it sounds. Rose's eyebrows draw down into a frustrated scowl.  
”How do you not know?” she demands. You shrink back a little. “Are you sure you're not just protecting him? You know that anyone who did that doesn't deserve you covering for them!”  
”No,” your voice is still soft and timid. You know who she thinks she's talking about. “It's not- I didn't- It wasn't-”  
You stop your shameful stuttering and take a deep breath. Every inch of you has begun shaking and, as you hesitate, you see Rose relax a little. Something like sympathy creeps onto her face. 

“This guy broke into the apartment,” you finally force out. Rose looks down at her hands, knuckles flexing.  
”And he was just a complete stranger? No one you'd ever met before?” The scepticism in her tone makes your stomach sink, and you look to your lap, as if it has the best means of answering her.  
”Well,” your tongue feels thick against your teeth as you start slowly. “'Member those sick comments I kept gettin' on YouTube?”  
”The sexually graphic ones,” Rose confirms, “yes.”  
”They were all th'same guy.”  
You get no response.  
”And they never stopped.”  
The silence from Rose impels you to continue.  
”He actually got 'hold'a my email and started sendin' me stuff.”  
All that fills your pause is a long, angry-sounding inhale.  
”And he figured out where I live.” 

The silence feels almost accusatory to you. Your brain fills the empty space it leaves in the living room with all the shame and doubt and guilt you've been stewing in for the past month and you know Rose must feel it too. You know she must be judging you for letting it happen and you have to explain, you have to justify to her why you fucked up, how it happened.  
”I just thought it was okay, y'know?” you insist to her silence. “I mean, I knew it was creepy, but I was just messin' around. I thought he was just some lonely loser, I thought he was funny. But then he starts sendin' me all this shit, actin' like he cared, and I bought it.” Your voice cracks and you focus in on your shaking hands. “I was stupid. I thought someone gave a shit, and he kept tellin' me how bad he wanted me, and I should'a fuckin' known then. I should'a known ain't no one ever gonna care 'bout me. I should'a seen it, but I didn't wanna. I just wanted t'be selfish and think that someone might actually give a shit and I let it happen! Even when he was there, even when he- I let it happen. I didn't fight back or nothin'. I just let it happen. I didn't tell no one. I let it happen. You even asked. Y'asked and I didn't tell ya cuz I wanted it to happen. It's my fault. I didn't stop him. I let it happen. I didn't-” 

An arm wraps around your hunched, trembling shoulders. It pulls you into a warm, clean-smelling embrace that curls around where you're clutching your sides and presses your hot face against the cool skin of Rose's neck. For the first time since the night it happened, you get the sense that you are allowed to express all the pain and horror that has been welling in your head, beating against the insides of your skull. No matter how weak, or pathetic, or simpering you feel, the sensation of a hand gently rubbing your back and a chin propped on the crown of your head assures you that Rose won't judge you for it. You release your body and instead cling to hers. 

“I didn't want to,” your raw voice is muffled in the thick fabric of her robe. “Not like- It hurt. It hurt and he wouldn't stop! It hurt. I didn't want- I couldn't- I couldn't stop him. I can't make- It won't go away. I can't make it stop. It won't-”  
The arms around you tighten when your words fail and degenerate into a hoarse scream. You sob into Rose's shoulder, every horrible thing you've felt, or told yourself, or suppressed welling up inside you and making you shudder as she rocks you gently. Her mouth is pressed into your hair and you can feel her lips moving against your scalp as she tells you, again and again, “It's not your fault.” 

_ _ _ 

In the end, you get Rose to agree not to tell John or Jade. She does, however, make you give her your password so she can shut down your YouTube and email accounts. She doesn't believe you the first time and makes you repeat it. After sobbing your guts out all over her, it feels good to softly snicker at her knowingly raised eyebrows when you tell her for a second time, “bst1nm4k3sm3f33lgd.”  
She tells you she won't confiscate the pills she knows you have, because she trusts you to keep the promise to cut back that she makes you swear. You do so half-heartedly, but it doesn't matter much anyway. If there's one thing growing up with Bro has taught you, it's how to do shit behind people's backs. And for all the catharsis you may have shared with Rose, by the time John and his dad walk back through there front door, you think you're still going to need a fall-back.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Small additional warning for some vaguely homophobic dumbfuckery and mentions of child molestation.

A boom and a crackle rend the air around you for a countless time. The clouds over Lake Wilderness glow green, red, and a sparkling shower lights up the night sky. Jade's delighted shriek and yipping laughter layers over the next thump of nearby fireworks. Halfway down the block another house has coolers out, and ground blooms snap and whizz in the street. Most of the neighbourhood is down at the lake – this is the first year you and your dad haven't gone down to celebrate Fourth of July with the better part of your town. With a house full of friends, though, you had told him you would rather spend the day at home.

On your front lawn Dave and Rose are facing off with sparklers, Rose dual wielding hers gracefully and Dave with his body slung into a sword-fighting stance. They swing trails of white and gold light between them, both smiling in their own reserved ways while your dad frets for their safety on the sidelines. For all his complaints about her prying, Dave seems to hold Rose in some special regard. Of the three of you, Rose is the only one apparently unsurprised by Dave's shyness. In fact, the two of them seem to share their own private language – one of pointed silences and deliberate gestures; subtly raised eyebrows and precise huffs of breath. In a way, it makes you a little jealous. Rose has in four days so easily slipped into a kind of comfort with Dave that has eluded you for over a week. You can't really blame her – Rose has a knack for getting under everyone's skin, for good or bad – but you still feel your heart sink in disappointment whenever one of your jokes fails to draw a smile from Dave, or when you feel him tense up in a friendly hug. 

Another boom sounds above the lake, casting the night in a blue glow. You lope over to your doorstep where the bag of fireworks your dad bought is piled and dig in, rummaging until you find a couple of skyrockets. Trotting back to the curb, you call Jade's attention over to you, passing her one of the pair.  
”Ooh! How do these work?” she asks, excited, as you jam yours into the soft dirt of the parking strip. You lift your head to grin at her in delight.  
”Check it out,” you wiggle the stem of the rocket a bit deeper into the soil, making sure it's wedged in good, before fishing the lighter your dad bought you out of your pocket. Jade's eyes light up with anticipation when you bring the fuse sizzling to life. 

With a distinctive scream, the rocket takes flight, bursting overhead with a boneshaking crack. Jade shouts in delight and you twist around to gauge Rose and Dave's reactions, see them both turned and looking up at the sky. The sparkler in Dave's hand gutters out, but not before catching its last light in the whites of Dave's wide, startled eyes. In that final flicker you just barely manage to register the fleeting moment of panic that touches Dave's features. Then his eyes drop, he notices you looking at him. An almost apologetic look knits his brow and you see his lips part, his tongue flick out nervously. He looks away quickly with an embarrassed expression, turns his attention to Rose as she lays a hand on his shoulder, and you feel an odd little twist in your stomach as the moment passes in a mere few breaths. Jade whacks your arm with the back of her hand. 

“Lemme do mine!” she says excitedly, and you hand her your lighter, distracted. Rose is leaning lose to Dave and saying something to him softly, her two dead sparklers clutched in one hand. You see Dave's eyes flicker shut for a quick moment, see him nod. He looks so much younger without his shades on, though his eyes seem tired. They flit everywhere, as though he has a hard time looking people in the face, fixing briefly on jawlines, or his hands, or the ground. Rose nods as she speaks and you can make out him muttering “yeah...yeah” and, a little startlingly, you feel a small, sudden twinge of jealousy.  
You push yourself out of your kneel. Behind you, the whistle-shriek of Jade's skyrocket goes off and the sky immediately overhead washes you all in pale green light. Dave doesn't react as severely this time, though his head does jerk up to watch the firework go off.  
”We've got more,” you tell him as you approach. Dave's shoulders come up tense and he jams one hand into the pocket of his jeans, the other flicking the stem of his sparkler in tight, anxious circles around his fingers. “C'mon,” you cajole, beaming in the face of his apprehension. 

You're all still adjusting to each other, to your newly shared space. Jade got wretchedly sick her second day with you and the smell of cocoa butter has made permanent residence where Rose moved a whole mess of weird, girly stuff into your bathroom. Your dad is on high coddle alert, fussing over how skinny both Dave and Rose are, while you've been just generally pooped keeping up with all the inconsistencies in your friends' schedules.  
But Dave seems like he's genuinely having an all around hard time. He sleeps so little, and when he does it's restless and murmuring. Last night was the second time he's woken you up with terrifying shouts, struggling in the grip of a nightmare. You wonder if it's the same one, or if he just generally has horrible dreams.  
When he's awake, Dave shuffles along from on-edge, to quiet and shy, to unnervingly disoriented. Yesterday he seemed a little calmer and more present when you got home from church, but after last night he's gone back to flinching and barely speaking. It hurts your feelings a little bit, you realise – the fact that he won't tell you what's wrong, and that nothing you do will make it better. There's this cold, uncomfortable feeling that gives your stomach a little twist every time Dave pointedly looks away from you, or tenses up around you. It's a weird feeling; it makes you feel weird. 

Pushing down the troublesome mix of feelings that well inside you when you think about him, you kneel again beside the bag of fireworks. Dave looms a little over you and you grin up at him. A small, very shy smile answers, making your throat feel oddly tight for a moment before you swallow the alarming sensation and ask Dave which one he wants. He defers to your judgement, ignorant of your suddenly dry mouth and the slowly unfolding realisation that's forming in the back of your mind. You grab him a Roman Candle, turning back to dig up another for yourself. 

“Hey, gimmie your light,” the drawl that tinges Dave's voice just slightly makes the tips of your ears burn when he bats your shoulder with his knuckles. You push your lighter into his waiting palm, just barely flustered because that little niggling feeling won't go away. It's not until you hear the click of the flint near your neck that you jerk around. 

”Dude, what the hell?” you exclaim, catching Dave standing behind you, holding his firework at just about his hip level, lighter ready for the fuse. Your sudden cry makes him raise his eyes to yours, a slightly confused look on his face.  
”W-What?” he half chuckles as his lips part in a lopsided smile. “S'cool,” he assures you. “This's how me'n Bro always do it – ain't like I'm gonna point it at'cher face or nothin'.” 

You push yourself up into a stand, dusting traces of dirt off the seat of your pants where your heels were digging into your butt. You peer at Dave in scepticism. True to his word, he aims the thing away from both of you, out towards the street. With a surge of inwardly-directed annoyance, you catch yourself taking notice of the way his long, slender fingers curl around the firework, distracting you as he lowers your lighter once again. 

_”Dave!”_

The sudden, chastising expulsion makes you jump and causes Dave to seize up entirely. He drops the Roman Candle and your lighter as if burned and freezes on the spot. As your dad hurries to your side, he looks a little harried.  
”What are you _doing?_ ” he's scolding, oblivious to the wide-eyed look of cornered panic your friend is facing you with. “Do you have any idea how irresponsible that is?”  
Your dad's voice is softly tinged with urgency, but for Dave's reaction one would think he was shouting. As he circles to stand facing him, Dave averts his eyes quickly. 

“I'm sorry!” he apologises hastily. You're standing close enough to him that you can see the slightest tremor in his hands when his fingers curl into fists. There's a rustle of movement in your periphery and you look around to see Rose has approached. She answers your no doubt confused expression with one that is hard and protective.  
”I just...I'm sorry!” Dave's still muttering frantically. You dad stoops a little, trying to catch Dave's eyes, and gives his shoulder a comforting squeeze. Dave's head jerks up to look at him and you get another one of those terrifying sinking feelings in your gut when you see the flex of his throat as he swallows, the dart of his tongue over his lips. 

“I'm not mad at you, son,” your dad tells him gently. A warm smile makes the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes stand out. “I know you boys like showing off for each other,” his kindly look stays fixed, even as Dave answers him only with a slightly shell-shocked expression. “But you could seriously hurt someone that way – you know that, right?”  
Dave blinks, shakes his head silently. You see that funny, concerned look you've been catching your dad giving him lately.  
”How about I do this one and you can watch?” he asks with another soft smile, nodding. You see Dave's fingers curl into the folds of his jeans and his head nodding in agreement. 

You don't get it. You don't understand why he doesn't bridle against the way your dad treats him, why he doesn't find your “old man” too corny for words. You don't understand why your dad dotes on Dave, why he treats him like this fragile little kid. Like, you get that your dad's all concerned and fatherly all the time anyway, but you had expected Dave at least to be way too cool to stand him. You'd anticipated that, at this point in the visit, Dave would have been pushing so many of his buttons that your dad would be pulling you aside to inform you with grave concern that, while your friend is a fine young man, you would do well not to be too taken by his example.  
But so far Dave hasn't even been swearing in front of your dad if he can help it. The few times his language has made your dad bristle – usually because they clearly have different views on where “hell” and “damn” lie on the cussing spectrum – Dave has been struck by the same nervous tension that you see flickering over his features now. His mouth turns down into the same hard, tiny frown he's giving your dad at the moment, and now, without his shades, you see it's accompanied by a cornered and almost feral glint in his eyes. 

Dave follows your dad to the curb. They garner Jade's attention as dad sets up the Roman Candle in the middle of the street. She gets up close to his shoulder while Dave hangs back on the pavement, hands in his pockets and shoulders still tight, body still tense. You and Rose join him. Rose lays a gentle hand on the back of his shoulder and he reacts, relaxes a little, and you feel another small bloom of jealousy. 

It's stupid – you feel like a complete idiot for it. It's not like you're in competition with Rose for your mutual friend's attention. But she still seems to get more of it, and that burns you for some reason. The suspect little feeling that's lurking in the back recesses of your mind shuffles restlessly. You try to ignore it a while longer, but out in the street the firework your dad set up goes off, and Jade yip-laughs in excitement, and you're not paying attention to either of them. You're looking at the red and blue flashes lighting up your friend's features instead, admiring the soft curve of his jawline in the low light. You're watching the white sparks that catch and reflect in his eyes, and the way his almost feminine lips part slightly and his breath picks up in response to the piercing shriek of the Candle. And as you do, that little beast of a thought comes rampaging to the forefront of your mind and you realise you are _fucked._

You can't have a homocrush on your best friend. That's just...not a thing you're okay with happening. Because if it does happen, then everything gets messed up. It would make all the times Dave's pretended to hit on you weird in retrospect. I would make sleeping in the same room with him uncomfortable. It would mean having to tell your dad probably, and that would be awkward. Plus, you don't know how Dave himself would react. You think it would probably be pretty rude to assume he'd be interested just because he's gay but, like...could he already tell? Maybe he already knew, or he'd find out – was there a way he could find out? Did gay guys have, like, homo-sense or something? Is that how they find each other if neither of them are super faggy? Dave is about as normal a guy as you'd expect, so when he came out, you had sort of had to reassess and realise not all gays are like you've seen on TV. Other than that, though, you don't really know much about being a homo, other than ew, buttsex, gross! Also, wouldn't one of you have to be the girl? You can't really see Dave being like that, but _you_ definitely don't want to be the girl, and you think maybe you should ask Dave about this stuff, cuz he'd probably know after all, but then he might get suspicious and you think you might be freaking out a little. 

You try to focus back on what's going on around you. In horror, you realise you've been staring at Dave, and that Rose has subtly leaned out of his line of sight to give you a raised eyebrow and a knowing look. It doesn't help your current state and you break her gaze uncomfortably. A mean little inner voice wonders if she'll tell Dave, since they're such good friends now, since she's the one he lets get close to him. You wonder if he's sensed this longer than you have, if that's why he gets uncomfortable and pulls away from you, and it makes your heart sink a little. Dejected, you shuffle slight and dig your hands into your pockets, looking down at your shoes. Movement out of the corner of your eye draws your attention back upwards, a little jolt sparking in your gut when you see Dave looking at you.  
It's not until the content, almost hopeful look on his face is brushed aside for one of shame, and he turns back away in embarrassment, that your realise you're scowling. You look back down at the pavement, nails biting into your palms inside your pockets, and think that this is stupid, you're stupid and Dave's sort of stupid too, and him being gay is stupid because it's making you feel gay now and everything is already getting messed up. 

_ _ _ 

You're not quite sure what you were expecting talking to Rose would accomplish, but you think maybe you were hoping for just a little more relief than this. Granted, there has been some comfort in her knowing. You would have thought getting a silent, acknowledging glance or a soothing hand on the back of your shoulder whenever you start getting that imploding, tight, breathless feeling would seem patronizing. Yet there's something reassuring in knowing someone understands. 

The Wednesday night after you told her, when you found yourself again laying awake, sweating and dizzy and nauseous because seriously, _fuck_ cutting back, you'd gotten up and shuffled down the hall to the guest bedroom, rather than throwing an orange down your throat and having done with it. Rose had answered in her black bathrobe, a little bleary-eyed. You'd tactfully turned your eyes away from the sight over her shoulder of Jade sleeping on her back, blatantly naked from at least the waist up. Still, you couldn't help but raise a sly eyebrow at Rose, which she'd returned a little smugly, and you'd told her “nice roots,” because you weren't really sure what else to say to someone whose natural hair you were seeing for the first time in four years of knowing them. She'd scratched the back of her head a bit self-consciously and asked why you were still up. You'd told her you couldn't sleep. 

“Do you need to talk?” Rose had asked, but you'd shaken your head no because you didn't want to rehash things, that was the problem, you didn't want to keep thinking about, keep reliving the same things that were endlessly looping in your restless mind. She had told you that wasn't what she'd asked, repeated herself. You'd ceased your anxious mumbling and mulled over the question.  
You just wanted something to distract you, you had admitted. A sympathetic smiled crossed Rose's face and she had nodded, stepping out into the hallway as she pulled the bedroom door closed behind her and cinched her bathrobe a little tighter. The two of you had crept downstairs, settled down together on the living room couch. Quietly, you had both curled into each other, wrapped in the throw that usually hung over the back of the sofa. She didn't mind holding you, had circled her arm around your shoulders when you rested your head against her chest. You'd watched her thumb run over the freckles on the back of your hand, the contrast stark even between your faded amber and her dark, dark brown. 

In soft, unsure, and ultimately humiliating tones, you'd told her you felt like a fuck-up, that you still felt like you'd brought this on yourself. She'd shaken her head against the top of yours. In a dull, clinical tone, she'd told you about being eight, about her English tutor, and about her mother, too perpetually intoxicated to see what was happening for almost six months. It made you think of Bro, and how he'd fucked off when you were scared of being alone in the apartment, and almost instantly you'd felt bad for being ungrateful towards him. You had tried to insist to Rose that what happened to you wasn't nearly as horrible as what she'd just told you, but she had given you a light, half-playful and half-exasperated swat to the cheek, told you it was the same thing. When you'd tried insisting that it had only been once for you, she'd told you once was bad enough. Even though it made you feel stupid and weak and emasculated, the way she had clutched your shoulders tighter and squeezed your hand had also made the few hiccuping sobs that managed to escape you seem a little less shameful. 

Despite the odd sort of solidarity that Rose provides, however, you still can't escape nightmares. You still can't get over the paranoia that John might find out, and what he might think of you if he knew. Every time he gives you that weird look of worry mixed with impatience you feel trapped and guilty. Twice since Sunday you've woken him up screaming. He doesn't rest a grounding hand on your shoulder any more; just like Bro, he merely hovers on the sidelines now, waiting for you to get your shit together. It makes you feel filthy and oversensitive – like you should just be over it by now; like he's realised you're too fucking dirty to touch. The two of you don't talk about it in the morning, making it seem all the more like something secret and shameful.  
In fact, John acts like nothing at all out of the ordinary is going down, a practice that's begun making you think maybe you really are exaggerating, overreacting. It makes you second-guess the resentment you've been nursing towards Bro ever since he ditched you in the apartment. No...longer than that. Every ass-whupping you've been on the receiving end of since you were little has fostered this latent discontent within you. It's simply taken him bailing on you and talking to Rose to recognise the feeling.  
But the blithe way John has been reacting to you makes you think maybe you're just being an overdramatic little shit; maybe you could have tried to act at least a little more grateful. You know Rose would say otherwise, but part of you still feels like she doesn't actually know. Her mom might have been a flake, might have been emotionally absent, but at least she had money. As much as you're sure it would piss her off to hear, you're certain that on some level she can't understand what it's like knowing your very existence ruined someone's life. You're certain she's never had to shoulder the weight of knowing that, for however much it makes you feel like shit, you're still obliged to recognise and be grateful for everything they've done for you. As much as the two of you might be able to relate to each others' experiences growing up, you know Rose would never accept the fact that this gratitude you owe Bro means you deserve it whenever he has to knock you around for being a little smartass. 

Yet for however long you might run yourself in mental circles resenting Bro, and feeling guilty for resenting Bro, and reminding yourself that you didn't have it that bad, you've been finding yourself slowly developing a desire for a gentler kind of attention. In spite of your initial trepidation around him, you've begun warming up to John's dad. He treats you with a sort of unconditional affection that you've never experienced before – on that is considerate, and attentive, and leaves you desperately craving more.  
You've begun hovering around the kitchen while he prepares meals, just to see the lines crease the corners of his eyes when he spots you and his face folds into a welcoming smile. Jade's in there with him sometimes too. She had to start making her own meals after the food John and his dad eat made her so sick. Mr. Egbert even went out of his way into Seattle to get her stuff she was more used to eating, since their local chain store didn't carry things like taro. The thought of asking such an inconvenience of him galls you, but he honestly didn't seem to mind – a fact which only further enamours you of him.  
On some miraculous occasions, though, John's dad is alone when he catches you spying on him bustling about the kitchen. Those are the times you're coming to cherish the most, when he beckons you in and you can shuffle up close to his side. He found out that Bro's casual disregard for feeding you has rendered you embarrassingly inept at preparing food and has begun teaching you to cook. It's something he apparently delights in, laughing about the fact that his own son never took much interest in learning the skill. You're simply happy for the opportunity to be near him, to bask in his attention. 

In your growing comfort around him, you've become less skittish, and he's gently begun encroaching upon your physical boundaries, the frequency of friendly pats on the back and affectionate shoulder rubs increasing now that you've stopped flinching away. You lean into his touch every time, Mr. Egbert either unnoticing or uncaring, his lack of reaction only prompting you to push further and further. Now you seize on opportunities to press towards him, nudge your shoulder into his arm, tilt your head just right to catch a brief hint of his scent.  
Bro smelled like sweat and Axe; sometimes like pot, sometimes like crank, usually like booze. But there was this undercurrent of something masculine that you catch on Mr. Egbert. It's a lot more appealing when it's mixed with faint traces of pipe tobacco, rather than the smell of Marbs or worse. He smells like flour, and the nice-ass soap they have, and aftershave that isn't overbearing or eye-watering like Bro's. It's subtle and just faint enough to drive you to fantasize about pressing your face to the line of his straight, firm jaw, feeling his shave-worn cheek rough against yours. 

The one time he's acknowledged your newfound desire for physical closeness, he tucked you against his side in a one-armed hug, rubbing your upper arm vigorously in his friendly grip. That night, after John was asleep, you'd snuck into the bathroom and showered in the dark - the best compromise you've managed to come up with. It was the first time you'd jerked off since before leaving Texas, and you came down the drain to the remembered sensation of a strong, protective arm squeezing your shoulders firmly, as you wondered what the fuck was wrong with you.  
You still haven't been able to satisfactorially answer that question to yourself. Even wrapped in darkness and the steady stream of scalding water, you hadn't quite been able to shake the feeling that the fingers fumbling over your swollen dick weren't your own, couldn't stamp down the conviction that if you could still get yourself off, it meant what had happened obviously wasn't that big of a deal. Especially not when you were squeezing one out to your best friend's dad. At least it would be somewhat normal if you were still getting off to fantasies that involved John's hands on your wrists, your legs around his waist.  
But you don't feel safe about John now. Even just thinking of how you used to imagine him makes you feel guilty, like you're tainting him. You're not good enough for him anymore – you've been used up, made unclean. Even your perverse little mind can recognise that. It's already diverted its attention back to the fantasies of strong arms pinning you and a powerful presence keeping you in your place that got you in trouble to begin with.  
As you towelled off in darkness and silently redressed yourself after your shower the other night, the cruel nag in the back of your mind had reminded you that the way you felt now meant you really had wanted it. No matter what Rose said, you had begged for it, had let it happen. If you hadn't secretly wanted it, you wouldn't be starving for it again. You wouldn't be looking desperately to the only grown man near you to hold you, wrap you in his arms – protected and restrained – and fuck you until you can't see straight. If you hadn't been asking for it, just like Bro said, the thought wouldn't make your cock twitch with interest. If you weren't such a slut, you wouldn't get a little shiver of lust down your spine every time you remember a warm, fatherly hand rubbing your back, and the smell of flour, tobacco, and something just so painfully masculine it makes your dick ache.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And finally!  
> Additional warnings on this one for more homophobic ashattery, suicidal ideation and racially-charged self-hate.

Two Tuesdays after the Fourth of July, you wake for the first time since your arrival in Washington to a stuffy room and bright light peeking in through the drapes. You roll over and slip an arm around the naked waist of the body next to yours, burying your face in a mass of thick, black hair with a drowsy hum. As Jade murmurs happily and wiggles a little in her sleep, you give a silent, relieved thanks to the weather

You're pretty sure both Jade and John have reached critical points in their ability to cope with being cooped up indoors. Naturally, neither you nor Dave have had much of a problem lurking around John's house for the past the weeks. You are both fairly solitary people, after all. Jade, however, grew up accustomed to having free rein over an entire jungle of her own, while John is simply an enthusiastically sociable person.  
As a result, both of them have been growing steadily more stir-crazy, expressing their boredom through increasingly chafing means. John mostly takes it out on antagonising Dave, a practice which you've been monitoring with wary discomfort. Jade's brimming energy, on the other hand, she expends on climbing the furniture, the tree in John's front yard, the sides of the house (much to Mr. Egbert's horror). Last week you found them up on the rooftop deck, firing off leftover bottle rockets with a sort of listless disregard for safety or proper handling.  
In fact, if you strain to listen now, you're pretty sure you can hear John starting up for the day. Letting out a little sigh of disapproval, you nuzzle Jade's hair and give her midriff a parting squeeze. Through the walls you can't make out the words of the exchange in the other room, but you can still recognise the half-bossy, half-wheedling tone John adopts when he's trying to get his way. Jade makes cooing, sub-verbal noises in your arms and the little stir of resentment towards John that jabs your mind is all the more acute as you disentangle your limbs from hers. 

Outside your cosy room, you hear a half-hearted grumble. While you cinch your bathrobe tight around your waist and straighten on your wig, Jade yawns loud behind you, her stretch audible in the tightness of her voice. You give her a quick, over-shoulder smile, catching her blinking sleepily at you before you slip out of the room.  
John's bedroom door is open, giving you small assurance that the walls are not as paper-thin as his near audibility would suggest. His back is facing you when you casually lean against the frame and around his shoulder you can see Dave sitting up on his floor mattress, face scrunched up in exasperation. 

“Egbert, fuck's sake,” he's groaning, eyes screwed shut. “It's nine in the buttfuckin' mornin'. Gimmie a fuckin' break!”  
”Yeah, but-” John starts, before Dave notices you standing at the door. He follows his gaze, the overexuberant way his face lights up at the sight of you making you narrow your eyes in suspicion.  
”Rose!” 

Dave rolls his eyes behind John's back. He looks weary, but less so than when you arrived. He's been up and down the past two weeks. You know he only superficially cut back on self-medicating – he still lacks a certain presence when the four of you are together. But you can also see him, at times, cautiously seeking out tentative, fragile connexions of safety amongst all of you, despite the crippling shyness that has been ingrained in him by his upbringing and more recent trauma.  
He seems to have cultivated a bit of an attachment to John's dad, a development which comes as unsurprising to you, considering his relationship with his brother. You're reserving your feelings about the situation, weighing the occasional moments in which Mr. Egbert's presence inexplicably puts you ill at ease against the knowledge that Dave _is_ very likely in need of a kinder father figure right now. After all, there's only so much you can do for him on your own. Pry too deep and you know his defences will snap up, making you just another unnecessary source of anxiety. Perhaps the paternal doting and kindly encouragement of an adult which Mr. Egbert seems so ready to offer could help Dave nurture a bit more esteem in himself. As you are, the best you think you're capable of is providing him an outlet, being someone who can understand and give him a certain sympathetic attention you strongly suspect he's never received. 

You answer his beleaguered look with a smirk before raising your eyebrows at John patronisingly.  
John either ignores or altogether fails to register the look. You've found yourself frequently wondering lately whether his obliviousness if affected or genuine. 

“Is Jade up, too?” he asks, not even waiting for an answer before turning back to tell Dave, “See? Rose is up already!”  
”Only because your voice carries, John,” you tell him blandly. “Why-” you break to stifle a yawn, “Why _are_ you up so early?”  
”Got some wild hair up his ass that we'all gotta go stompin' around in th'woods now that th'sun's actually decided t'grace us with it's beamin' fuckin' presence,” Dave deadpans, shooting John a chagrined look. John strikes a combative stance.  
“C'mon, Dave, don't you wanna go out?” he asks. That tone is back. You wince at Dave. “It's, like, finally summer, man. Like, _summer_ -summer! Besides, I didn't say the woods, I said the lake.”  
”Which's in th'middle'a th'woods'r some shit,” Dave says. He scratches his arms and you notice the draw of tension set in his features as he glances around his immediate area.  
”Dude, it's a park,” John says, sounding a little annoyed. “They've got a whole beach area where you can go swimming and stuff. I thought we could-”  
Dave pulls a face and you interrupt John with, “Wait, you want to take us swimming?” 

John turns to face you fully. While behind his back, Dave finally locates his shades and shoves them on his face.  
”What?” John asks petulantly. “You're not gonna be a totally lame shut-in now too, are you?”  
”You cast him a withering look and behind him Dave snorts and flops backwards onto his mattress.  
”No, John,” you tell him a little tersely. “I just don't think any of us expected swimming on our recreational agenda. I know that I, for one, certainly didn't bring a swimsuit, and-”  
”We're going out?” 

Jade rests her chin on your should as she comes up behind you and, well, that's that discussion finished. John beams at her in elation. Whatever slim chance you and Dave may have had of talking him down has just evaporated under Jade's beaming enthusiasm. A weary, grumbling sound rises from the mattress behind John and you hear the rattle of Dave retrieving his russack. 

“Jade, do you even have a swimsuit?” you inquire in a feeble, final attempt. She smiles and cocks her head slightly.  
”No, why?”  
Dave snickers in the background and John waves frantically. You note a hint of a blush at the tips of his ears as he tells you, “It's fine if you guys need swimsuits – I've got my card from dad,” behind him you hear Dave fumble his bag, “So we're totally covered. 

Sighing, you check Dave's reaction. This isn't the first time this visit that John has been completely flippant about blowing money on the three of you, something which clearly unnerves Dave. Sure enough, when Dave lifts his face to yours, you catch the way he sort of forces out the tension that's bunched up his shoulders. Silently he lets out a little puff of breath and shakes his head in resigned solidarity. Jade swings her body around yours, steadying her hands on your waist, pushing into John's room as she asks him where he's taking you all. 

_ _ _ 

Being the early rise that he is, John's been dressed well before the rest of you. Almost bouncing with excitement, he clamours down the stairs, calling promises of coffee and “I dunno, bagels or some shit,” back over his shoulder. As the three of you set about fixing up for leaving the house, you can hear him banging around on the first floor.  
Dave shuffles into the bathroom first, bag in hand, and the sound of him scooping handfuls of water from the tap has you hoping he's at least practising moderation. When he passes you on your way in, his shades are in place and he moves with the odd, almost gliding gait he affects just after taking something – that psychosomatic boost of confidence that comes before his drugs take proper effect.  
Breakfast is small and brief, with only a minor upset in Jade muttering “goddammit, John,” when he presents her with one of the same butter-slathered cheese bagels he offers you and Dave. While John rolls his eyes and helps himself to half of her discarded meal, Jade rummages a bag of bulk granola from the cupboard and sits across from him, munching down handfuls spitefully.

With John's dad well gone for the day, you're left to the whims of public transit, though John's familiarity with the system makes your wait short. To your surprise, Dave is the first aboard when the bus arrives, making a beeline for the back corner while John sorts fare for everyone. Dave settles into his seat with the most ease you've seen in him in a public place since you arrived, and the modicum of hope the sight grants brings a small smile to your face. He catches it, moulding himself against the window at his shoulder comfortably and giving you a tiny, shy reply. Your two more gregarious companions bustle back to join you and the look is gone as he quickly settles his face back into his usual neutral expression. 

Despite its proximity to a greater city, the route you take through Maple Valley evinces more of a small town feeling than one even of suburbia. The pockets of forest which remind you a little of home are interspersed with swaths of concrete parking lots, gravel backroads, little clutches of generic ranch houses. John herds you all off the bus at a stop in front of a strip mall. Accustomed to the relative isolation and mail ordered amenities on which your mother raised you, you have to catch and swallow the incredulous laugh that springs to the back of your throat at the sight.  
A long out of business video rental shop still occupies the gutted space next to a chain pharmacy. Down the long, paved curb you can see a dodgy nail salon and oh god, your mother would love how tacky this whole arrangement is, they have a store devoted solely to wizard paraphernalia. John is leading you across the main lot towards an apparel store that squats upon the greater part of the collective property and, well, that explains all the cargo shorts.  
Your horror must be showing on your face, because you catch Dave giving you an amused smirk behind John's back. Jade nudges your shoulder with hers and hooks her arm around the crook of your elbow. With an exaggerated sigh, you return Dave's smile with a weary one of your own. 

Considering the relatively early hour and the weekday, the store is near deserted when your group enters. The pop music being piped in over the sound system has been turned own to a tolerable, almost ignorable volume, and most of the employees milling about appear respectably groggy. The spare exception is an Aqua Netted, middle-aged woman who greets you with excessive courtesy and has garnished her uniform with myriad accoutrements denoting her managerial status. You feel her eyes on the back of your neck as John leads everyone over to the swimwear and scowl.  
John points out the girl's section before clasping Dave's hand and pulling him towards racks of swimtrunks. The overly intimate gesture quirks your eyebrow and you catch a little flush creeping up the back of Dave's neck as he allows himself to be led. The largest women's sizes face you and you move quickly down to the furthest row, thumbing through the extra smalls for something remotely modest. Jade seems at a bit of a loss, poking idly into random spots along the rack, pulling out the occasional suit and making a face at it. 

“I don't get it,” she says loudly. “It's not like these make much of a difference anyway – what's the fucking point?”  
It's difficult to find a justification she'll accept. You had tried over breakfast already and it's looking like the concept of covering oneself in a public swimming area is going to be one of those things about which Jade has decided her opinion on the matter is clearly superior. You hum a neutral response, earning an exasperated huff from Jade, and flick your eyes up over the lines of metal racks. Aqua Net has conveniently occupied herself two rows from your own and barely attempts to feign disinterest when she sees your eyes on her. You sneer at her in open disdain. 

From over in the boy's section you hear an eruption of snort-giggling. In between guffaws, you make out John insisting that Dave allow him to buy him a Speedo, as Dave calmly monotones that it's going to have to be a banana hammock or no deal. Their ruckus draws the irate stare of Aqua Net and you flip past another few suits with a smug smile.  
From down your aisle, Jade barks a short laugh of delight. When you look her direction, she's hurrying towards you, showing off her find. The bikini she's discovered is an eye-burning tiger print in neon aqua and, you're almost certain, approximately two sizes too small for her. Still, she waves if over her head excitedly as she calls for Dave's attention. When he turns, she brandishes it at him with a playful snarl and he chuckles around a lopsided grin. 

“Yiff yiff, Harls,” he calls back and she breaks into a wide smile. She turns to you, holding the bikini up in front of her with a flourish and a cocked hip, waiting for your sign of approval. A chuckle of your own turns up the corners of your lips and you nod, knowing there wouldn't be much that could dissuade her from something she's that excited about anyway. 

In the end, you manage to find a reasonably modest lilac one-piece with a sewn-on skirt bottom. John's Speedo plot is ultimately subverted in favour of a set of plain brown trunks for Dave. You shuffle your two friends out of the store ahead of him, waiting out front as John pays, mostly to distract Dave from the fact. Once John joins you with a bag of newly-purchased swimwear, he herds the lot of you back to the bus stop from which you came, to wait for a ride down to the lake. 

_ _ _ 

If the strip mall was undercrowded, the turn-out by the lake is providing an appropriately extreme contrast. If you had to guess, you would say quite nearly the whole of the teenage population of Maple Valley has come down to enjoy the first true day of summer, just as your little group has. Boisterous as ever, John leads the way, occasionally calling out or waving at peers he no doubt recognises from his school. Any preconception you may have had of John being the type who turns to internet socialisation out of real world alienation is dashed by the friendly greetings and intrigued glances that turn your way.  
It makes sense, really. John is outgoing, goofy, and affable, not to mention just the right level of moneyed to garner solid middle class status without tipping too far over into wealthy unapprochability. With his penchant for joking around, you can easily picture him fitting well into the role of class clown, holding that peculiar position of being able to move amongst any number of social groups, without being adhered to a single one. 

John is leading your group in the direction of a concrete and frosted glass architectural abomination, attended by gender-segregated lines of chattering teenagers. Getting you and Jade situated in your relevant line, John digs Dave's new swim trunks out of the shopping bag before handing the rest off to you. He drags Dave off with a cheery wave and another conspicuously intimate hold on his wrist, leading him around to the boy's side of the changing rooms while leaving Jade and yourself to your own devices.  
The line is a crawl. Though most of the lake is girded by forest, the swim area has been clear-cut of trees back to the pebbly concrete parking lot that butts up against the changing area. It affords you no shelter from the sun and your scalp itches with sweat. Jade is quiet, though her eyes are wide, looking all around her at the throng of people. She is brimming with excited energy and you hope the crowd isn't too overstimulating for her. You worry about Dave. 

By the actual entrance to the changing rooms, your line has dissolved into more of a confused huddle. Trying to push your way through, you and Jade are jostled into the shoulders of a pair of pale, blonde girls. They cringe away, one of them making an audible noise of disgust, and you glower openly at them.  
The air in the building is humid with the steam of showers and carries a thick melange of countless cheap brands of soap and shampoo, undercut by the inevitable must of mildew. The blondes have set themselves at a distance, but you haven't lost their attention. You catch a disdainful laugh as one of their friends join them, an appraising sneer, and while Jade is still apparently oblivious, you haul her off into a stall with an exasperated sigh.  
This is everything you hate about being around most girls your age and you resent John a little more for dragging you out into it. As you pull the flimsy stall curtain shut with a pointed snap, however, Jade focusses all her newly distraction-free excitement on you. It's hard to maintain a sour disposition when she's beaming right at you and practically flapping her hands in anticipation as she asks for her new suit. 

You make no pretence of avoiding watching Jade as she pulls her top off. She gives you a toothy grin once her shirt's over her head and she can see you admiring the bounce of her settling breasts. Knowing how vocally enthusiastic she can get, you're half tempted to pull her towards you and kiss every inch of her exposed skin, if nothing more than to offend the sensibilities of the gaggle of delicate, white, teenage suburbanites on the other side of your stall curtain. More rationally, you take Jade's shirt from her, trading it out for the upper half of the neon atrocity she purchased. Just as you expected, the suit isn't quite a fit. Looking it over, you get the feeling she may fall out of her top. Another hunch tells you she probably wouldn't care.  
You give Jade the modesty of turning away as she begins to shimmy out of her denim skirt, focussing instead on your own clothes. Your restraint is ill-rewarded, however, as the moment you get out of your bra, Jade's hand slips around your back and honks one of your breasts, causing you to let out a most unseemly yelp. You turn on your heel to punch her in the shoulder as she giggles and try to scowl indignantly through the grin afflicting your face. Jade wiggles her fingers mock-menacingly and you bat at her hands playfully. She trades custody of your shared bag of clothes, freeing you up to slip out of your skirt and quickly pull on your new suit. 

As soon as you've gotten your clothes properly stowed in your shopping bag, Jade bounds out of the changing room ahead of you, into the sunlight. You follow quietly behind, noting the equally poor coverage of her bikini bottom and, with a satisfied smirk, the way she absent-mindedly steamrolls one of the girls from before, in her preoccupation with finding Dave and John.  
Over the chatter of the crowd, you hear John's laugh from around the boy's side of the building. There's a scoffing quality to it that sets your eyebrows down in concern and you call out to Jade, gesturing her in their direction. As you round the building, you hear a chortled, “What the fuck, man?” from John that puts a little more speed in your steps. 

There's as much a crowd amassed at the entrance to the boy's changing rooms as there was on your side. Jade trots up beside you, hair wild about her shoulders and turning a few heads, as you crane your neck to get a glimpse of your friends. The flow of bodies is a little stilted, more erratic than outside the girl's room. The reason becomes apparent when you spot John and Dave, just in front of the entrance. Mild alarm tightens your chest and you push forward to get closer.  
John's face is open and smiling, his posture relaxed. He looks completely at ease, towel draped over one shoulder and acknowledging the occasional greeting from a passing teen, all of which throws into sharper relief the state Dave currently is in. You push towards them, earning a few disgruntled sounds from people in line, as Jade tags behind you. 

“C'mon, dude, what the hell's the hold up?” John's voice is laughing and easy and it makes you frown. Dave has backed up against the wall just outside the main door of the changing room. His shades are in place, but he is otherwise bare to the waist, the clothes he came down with balled and clutched in front of him. He's hunkered, shoulders drawn up and head hung low, and there's a tension running through him so powerful you can practically see him shaking from your distance.  
Every inch of him speaks of a profound discomfort with being as exposed as he is, and you find it slightly alarming that John is failing to acknowledge this. In fact, his attitude is so resolutely cavalier you find yourself growing warily defensive on Dave's behalf. 

As you approach, a sequence of actions tumbles out before you. A boy apparently familiar with John claps him on the back in passing, making Dave flinch and John toss a smile over his shoulder. He catches sight of you and uses it to turn back around, lurch towards Dave as if to grab him. Dave presses himself back against the wall and you feel an angry flush in your face as you hear John repeat that dismissive laugh of his and tell Dave, “See? You're making everyone wait! Quit being such a fag and let's go!” 

He isn't expecting the fingers you clamp around his upper arm, staggering when you wrench him back. The crowd around you steps back with a surprised murmur and John blinks at you in confusion. You glare up into his face, lip curled in anger. 

“The fuck is wrong with you?” you hiss, not wanting to draw more attention than you've already garnered. Jade is hanging back to your left and you can feel the eyes of spectators on you and then John has the gall to let out an awkward laugh.  
”What the hell, Rose?” he chuckles. “I'm just trying to get Dave off his ass here.”  
”No, you're being cruel to impress your little school friends,” you nod your head in the direction of the crowd at his back. John laughs again.  
”I'm not trying-” he winces as you dig your fingers into his arm, leaning up closer and holding his eyes.  
”You don't get to project your insecurities onto Dave, John,” you lower your voice dangerously. “And don't you _ever_ let me hear you call him a fag again.” 

John looks down at you, slightly startled. There's tension swirling around the two of you and his face begins to sink into a scowl. You're mentally preparing yourself for a fight when a hand softly touches the back of your shoulder. The slight tremor you can feel in the fingertips on your skin drains you of your anger. 

“S'all right,” Dave tells you softly. When you turn, you see his face angled towards the ground and his clothes clutched to his chest. “It ain't a big deal. S'all right.”  
”See?” John laughs off quickly. “Dave knows I'm just messing around!”  
You turn a glare back at him, killing his smile. With a shove, you release his arm. You turn your attention to Jade, standing nearby, arms crossed over her chest. 

“You still want to go swimming, right?” Jade huffs and nods. “Why don't you have John show you down to the lake before he ruins your day too?”  
”Hey! Wha-” John splutters, colour rising in his cheeks. “What the hell are you gonna do?”  
”We're not going swimming, John!” you say shortly. “Neither of us wanted to do so in the first place, and if you're going to behave like a spoiled child about it, then we're not going to!” 

You see John square his jaw and raise your chin defiantly. Dave shuffles anxiously beside you and Jade scowls between you and John finally throws his hands up.  
”Fine!” he snaps. “Fine, whatever, be a fucking spoilsport, see if I care! C'mon, Jade.”  
He turns away, and as he stalks off with Jade in tow, you hear her cross voice asking, “Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you?” His exasperated plea for her not to start too fades as they pass down the trail to the lakeside. Pursing your lips and scowling a moment longer, you relax your expression with a sigh as you turn back to face Dave. 

“Y'didn't have't,” he mumbles as he clutches his bundle of clothes tight against his chest. He shuffles his feet and remains facing the ground. You're reminded of the crowd around you in the anticipatory ripple of noise and part of your stomach sinks in mortification for having caused a scene when Dave was already upset. Lifting your head, you cast a defiant glare around at the eyes watching you, jaw set in a silent command that they move along. You wrap a gentle arm around Dave's shoulders, feeling the shake in them as you hug him to your chest and lead him away from the changing rooms. The amassed teenagers baulk and clear away from your scowl. Pressing your lips to his hair and hugging his shoulders, you tell Dave he can put his shirt back on as the two of you find the beaten dirt path leading away from the lake. 

The woods open up for your little trail as Dave tugs his raglan over his head and you hold onto his jeans. Trees provide shade and cover and a barrier between you and the activities by the lake, making the sounds of your fellow teens seem distant and detached. You keep a hold on Dave's pants for him while he readjusts his shades, and for a while the two of you walk in vaguely tense silence. Dave wears a thoughtful, brooding frown and you quietly observe the shift of green light and shadows around you, giving him the mental space he needs.  
After five minutes of silent hiking, Dave stops where a break in the tree line affords you both a view of the lake. As he looks out over the sparkling water revealed by the cut in the underbrush, you see him swallow and wet his lips in anticipation of speech. 

“It was okay,” he says softly. “But thank you. I just couldn't- That many people-” he stops himself and, after a moment, laughs. “I don't even know how to swim.”  
Dave turns to you with a small, crooked smile and you return it warmly. 

_ _ _ 

Your house has never been this full of life and you are loving it. You almost wish you'd taken a longer break from work, are seriously considering putting in a request to use some of the vacation time you've barely touched, for a week or two in August, just to spend time with your son and his friends. Every evening when you get home, your house feels comfortable and full. Even when John and his friends are still out you find evidence of them everywhere – a stray ball of yarn or dishes in the sink; a polite mess of game discs stacked in the living room or one of the brightly-coloured pieces of cloth John's islander friend ties around her fingers. 

That Harley girl is an awfully odd duck. Both she and your son are a little sketchy on the details of where she lives. All you've managed to gather so far is that she had to charter a flight out of Manila that picked her up somewhere in the Pacific to bring her here. And all that tells you is she must have an astonishing level of disposable income that seems out of sync with her level of naivety.  
She cooks with you frequently, preparing her own meals alongside those you whip up for the rest of your burgeoning household. She's adopted a mildly disconcerting habit of pressing her bare hand flat on the burners of your stove-top as they warm, scowling skeptically, as if she doesn't quite trust them to function properly. She has yet to injure herself, however, and she makes up for whatever concern she may engender in you with vivacious conversation, regaling you with outlandish stories about adventures she claims to have had in the company of her dog. When you'd asked her how her companion was faring without her presence, she'd waved you off with a blithe, “Bec can take care of himself.” While you're not sure you wholly believe all the tall tales she tells you, they certainly go a long way in explaining why she considers the better part of your house and it's contents a suitable jungle gym. 

The other new addition to your cooking routine is considerably less obstreperous, but no less graciously welcome. It's taken just about a month since this quiet, anxious young man came into your home, but he seems to finally be warming to you. He moves with an awkwardness that somehow seems out of place in him, though you have no contrary frame of reference. The deft manner in which he handles cutlery when he assists you, the speed with which he picks up your lessons, and his snap reactions whenever he's startled – all speak to you of grace subverted. He holds himself reserved, tense, his gestures terminate abruptly, yet he eases – if only a little – when he believes himself to be under no scrutiny. It's obvious he has stifled himself, though his motivations are unclear. He is so impeccably well-mannered, deferent to you to a painful fault, and it makes you wonder about him. It reminds you of the slum of a neighbourhood you picked him up in, the run-down apartment and its glaring lack of an adult presence. It piques the interest of something needful and authoritarian that lurks in the back of your mind. 

You feel at odds with yourself. You want to know every detail of the shy boy who shuffles up to your side when the two of you work alone, practically melts into your friendly back-pats and embraces, hungrily consumes the praise you give him. You want to learn where he comes from, how he came to be so desperate for approval. You want to mould that desire, harness it and make it your own. You want to hold only that, his need and his acquiescence to your authority, without thinking on or even knowing what drives it. You want to know nothing of him, to keep him anonymous and endlessly malleable in your view of him.  
A part of you recognises the right and proper thing to do in this situation. You can see the lack in this young man's life and want to fill it with the love and fatherly guidance all boys like him deserve. That aspect clings tenaciously to decency, attempts with increasing difficulty to wrestle down your cruder inclinations. You've slipped only once, but it was all the encouragement your base desires needed. They remember, feed on, obsess over the feel of his warm body moulding against yours. 

It had only been a brief moment, an awkward accident of moving around the kitchen that had brought you to a pause behind him, leaning over him to check his work. But your hand had been at his elbow, the other holding his shoulder, and he had stopped. His stillness had drawn the moment into something more intimate, thrown into acute regard the shift and heat of his narrow shoulders against your torso. His head barely grazed your collarbone when he tilted it against against you and the soft, plump meat of his perfect little bottom had given against your thighs as he rocked his hips back. Leaning over his shoulder, you could see, past the soft curve of his cheek, the motion of his lips just barely parting.  
In that moment you had been struck by the urge to pull his chin up and lay claim to him, to taste him. You had wanted to see his cheeks flush for you, to hear him gasp as your hands found his skinny hips, lifted him to the tips of his toes and settled his pert backside against your pelvis. You'd imagined how it would feel to be nestled in his warm cleft, how his breath would quicken when you bent him over your counter, the soft moan that would escape his lips as you slid into him.  
He would let you – you know he would let you do whatever you wish to him, and the thought alone had been enough to get you hard. It was the small of his back, just above his hips and the tantalizing slope of his rear, that pressed warm against your prick, and that feeling was enough to jar the moment. In an instant you could imagine how you must seem: the man he was trusting and opening up to and eagerly trying to please – pinning him against cold marble and rutting on his back. It stirred the same feeling of power you got from directing those whom you had paid to submit to your needs, and it forced you back away from him quickly. 

You were shaken, he seemed not. If Dave had noticed anything, he never let on. All that passed through the space you had put between the two of you was another beat of stillness. Then Dave's shoulders came back up (you hadn't even realised he had relaxed) and he resumed his task in slow silence. You had excused yourself from the room, retreated to your study and the comfort of your pipe, sequestered yourself long enough to collect your scattered control. When you had returned to the kitchen, Dave was quiet, and slump-shouldered, and awaiting your instruction. All it took was an affectionate tousle of his hair to drive out the lingering effects of your moment, though Dave continued what was left of dinner preparations in silence.  
The incident passed unremarked-upon and if there was any trace of discomfort still hanging over your kitchen, you reason that it must simply be of your perception alone.  
You find yourself vexed by his company. That conflict of emotions you first experienced upon meeting him has only grown stronger, twisted into something you've only vaguely felt before. The desire to dote upon him only feeds the fantasies that have begun to plague your nights, the images of him vulnerable and panting under your gentle, guiding touch. The line between paternal instinct and illicit desire blurs in the most perverse manner when you consider him. You catch yourself imagining, as he obediently follows your instruction in the kitchen, teaching him how to use his hands, his mouth, his body to please you. 

This line of thinking is troublesome in the extreme. It makes you consider taking that week off all the more seriously. Perhaps you are simply a touch overworked – such unsettling thoughts could only be the product of a fatigued mind. If nothing else, taking some time to look after your son and his friends would be a pleasure. It would do you well, you reason, to remind yourself of your young guest's status as your son's friend, as a minor in your care. This is easier logic for you to justify than the fixated desire to simply bask in his presence. You choose to tell yourself that it is your only motivation. 

_ _ _ 

In the end, it took less than a month for John to get sick of you. That's not true – you wore out your welcome a scant week after getting to Washington. He's just been politely humouring you ever since. It's only taken this long for your idiot, drug-addled brain to catch up. 

When you'd promised Rose you would cut back on the shit you stole from Bro, you had honestly meant it. But that was before you could see John's disappointment in you, before he started catching himself about to sling a friendly arm around your shoulders, or leaning into you as he laughed, and pulling away as if he could feel just how disgusting you were through your skin. That was before the weather turned, and John's mood with it, and suddenly you and the girls were being dragged out places to eat, to hang out, where crowds of people pressed in around you and you couldn't tell where the next attack would come from and now you're running low on blues. He still tells you not to be such a fag when you do something he doesn't like, when he knows Rose can't hear, and you've switched to yellows because you need the blues to keep your head on straight and your chest from collapsing when John hauls you out of the house.  
You need the blues to keep breathing, and the yellows to gloss over the underhanded barbs John throws at you amidst laughter and a joke, and you need the oranges to put you out at night because he doesn't shake you awake any more. He just sits and watches and sighs when he gets up to get you water, while you struggle to remember that you're not back home, that he's not Bro, distant and scornful and sick of your shit. You feel guilty for lying to Rose, but with each nightmare it gets harder to tell Bro and John apart. You've been realising slowly that you're starting to dread the day you do just the wrong thing that makes John lose his patience with you. 

On nights like tonight, when you can't slip Rose's watchful eye or John's overbearing presence long enough to get at your stash, you force yourself to stay awake as long as possible, delaying the inevitable screaming, sobbing mess that will wake John. He snores open-mouthed, with a slight wheeze, and you find it weirdly adorable, hate yourself for your lingering attraction to him. You have not right clinging on to that old infatuation – not when he is so clearly repelled by you. Not when three nights ago that heavy breath was your only soundtrack as your hands strayed and kneaded at the front of your boxers and you remembered the feel of his dad's hand on your shoulder and had to sneak to the bathroom to clean yourself off afterwards.  
When you can't let yourself sleep like this, your mind runs itself in mean little circles. It plays back Bro's voice down the phone line, cold and disgusted with you. It loops Bro in your face, furious and telling you that you asked for it, dredges up endless repeats of him calling you worthless, lazy, selfish mulatto brat. It grinds into your skin the feeling of gripping fingers and hot breath and a stranger's voice telling you what a greedy little slut you are. And when it gets that far, you can't even imagine why Bro ever thought you were worth his time, because your throat closes up and your eyes well in spite of your best efforts. 

You move as quietly as you can in the late-night stillness of John's room. Your breath sounds loud and you have to wipe your eyes, and when you fumble in the dark for your pack, your hands shake. It seems like your hands always shake these days. They shake when you have to go out, when John embarrasses you, as you tug at the cinch of your bag's drawstring and try with every ounce of effort you can muster to not let it rattle as you pull it open. You should be doing this in the bathroom, where you could turn on enough light to see, but you worry the sound of carrying your bag might disturb John. You're not too picky anyway – you just need something to calm you down. 

Under layers of the few clothes you brought, your fingers brush ziplock film before they find the hard plastic of a bottle. It pauses you, makes your breath hitch. You'd actually forgotten about jacking Bro's stash, and as your fingers close around the baggie you have to squeeze your eyes shut and swallow the lump that rises in your throat. You remember Bro's cold snarl coming over your phone, but you also think of actually getting to hang out with him. You think of his rasping laugh whenever you spluttered after taking too big a bong hit, of him showing you how to roll a joint, how to make a pipe in a pinch out of shit you can find around the house. Your mouth twists bitterly and for the shortest moment you allow yourself fleeting resentment because _fuck_ him, the only time it's ever felt like he was actually raising you was when you were getting stoned together.  
Instant guilt twists in your gut for the thought and you swallow again, pull the bag out of your pack. In the dark you feel for your track pants, grab the hoodie that John lent you when you commented on how freakishly cold Washington was for July. It's too big for you, your hands lost in long sleeves, and you shove the baggie into the front pocket. 

Though you can feel how clumsy your footing is, you still move quietly enough through the house to not disturb anyone else. Bro would be all over you, but by now you've memorised which stair in the Egberts' house creaks, learned how to pass through the kitchen's saloon doors without letting them clap back on themselves. Soft silences hangs over the house and a glance at the wall clock confirms your internal sense that it's shortly after 1am. You slide a paring knife out of the cutlery drawer, pluck an apple from the bowl of fruit on the small dining table, and slip silently out the back door. 

You remember climbing up to the roof of your apartment on summer nights when it was too hot to sleep. You remember sitting on the big hunk of the building's rooftop a/c in your boxers and a tank, the metal still warm on your skin and the air still thick, refusing to drop below 75. On those nights the reek of exhaust and the ocean always hung heavy. You could hear sirens, traffic, music and fighting, drunks if it was the weekend, as the lights of downtown glowed in the distance.  
Out here the night is silent and cold. You can hear wind and the shapes of houses, trees, fences loom in the darkness. The streetlamps on these blocks are low, unobtrusive, and the light you left on in the pantry washes a little island over John's backyard amidst them. It catches on the plastic grin of the green pogo ride John surreptitiously glares at whenever he passes, and glints off the chains of his childhood swing-set. You're actually small enough that it can still handle your weight when you settle down in one of the seats.  
You don't prefer it here. There's emptiness that should put you at ease, but you know it's false. You know there are families, people, lurking eyes behind each darkly outlined house huddling in the night. Yet you're not sure you miss Texas, even as you remember being home. Because you remember the feel of home as well. You remember, even before you fucked up and stopped feeling safe in your own skin, that home was loneliness and frustration. Home was treading lightly, feeling stupid, wanting out. You feel guilty for feeling like this, just like you always have, but it's still there. With a melancholy sinking, you realise you used to think you wanted out to here. You remember imagining things would be better up here, but all you've found is more of the same. You're still anxiously watching your steps, still feeling like a fuck-up, still feeling trapped, and it makes you wonder if there's anywhere that things would be different. 

Juice from the apple in your palm runs over your fingers as you begin to carve into it. You focus on your shaking hands rather than thinking about why you're blinking back the moisture that's risen to cling at your eyelashes. You grind your teeth, blinking again to clear the blur in your vision. Your hand slips a little – you've gotten so embarrassingly uncoordinated – and the knife twists wrong, catching your thumb.  
For a very long moment, you stop and stare at the little bleeding gash leaking onto the skin of the apple in your palm. You study your knuckles, your weak, skinny wrist. You've gotten so pale and it makes you think that usually you would be happy to be this light. Usually you hold yourself up to Bro's standard, with his naturally platinum blonde hair and his creamy, even complexion, and see yourself as lacking, dirty by comparison. At best you look like Bro when he needs to shower, mottled and speckled as if you were covered in filth because your goddamned skin can't even make up its mind what colour it wants to be. You look like Bro desaturated, except not really, because no matter how much you overexpose the pictures you take of yourself, it still doesn't fix your round face or the fucking nose he always teases you about. Sometimes, when you share pictures with your friends, you wonder if they don't say anything just to be polite, or if you've made up for it by washing out your dirty face.  
But you can't even get lightening right. Even in getting closer to how you wish you looked – light enough that Bro would have one less reason to make fun of you – your skin is still sabotaging you. All you've done is gone sickly and wan, waxy. Instead of dirty, you simply look unhealthy, and as you stare at the sick-pale of your inner wrist, your brain laughingly tells you, “Down the road, not across the street,” and you hate yourself. You hate seeing yourself in the mirror, and you hate being so goddamn scared all the time, and you hate the fact that apparently whatever scraps of masculinity you had to cling to were fucked right out of you because it's official, you are now a bawling thirteen year old girl.  
Bro was right to call you a sissy. Only a complete pussy would think of such a cop-out, would fail so spectacularly at just sucking it up and moving on. The thought is just so fucking typical of you, the stupid little kid who always fucks up, never does anything right, can't deal with his own shit and lie in the fucking bed he made. You almost want to stab the shitty little knife you're holding into your leg out of frustration. 

Instead, you start turning the blade in it's place again, carving into the apple. You focus on your task, brushing aside the thoughts crowding your brain with a single purpose and swallowing your welling, shameful emotions. You blink again, your lashes catching more moisture and stopping it from going any further, and you feel ashamed and disgusting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this one took so long. We're in the home stretch, so hopefully the last two chapters will come a little quicker!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> today's extra warnings are for racist fuckassery and scattered showers of homophobia.

Even at night in the jungle, you were always blanketed in noise. There have been so many evenings in which you were lulled asleep, fingers woven into Bec's shaggy fur and wrapped in thick, moist air, surrounded by animal cries, chitters, rustling. You've been growing homesick. You miss the hum of your generators, and the smell of the trees, and the distant crash of the ocean. The nights here are cold and maddeningly still, and even though you have been enjoying the company of your friends, you're starting to think you hate it here.

It was exciting at first, seeing and experiencing so many things you'd only read about on the internet. You loved the plane, riding around in cars and on buses. You loved seeing buildings as tall as your observatory, all clustered together, and real actual houses, lined up neat and uniform behind genuine white picket fences.  
But you were less prepared to deal with people than you anticipated. John and his dad are fine, of course, as are Dave and Rose. Meeting everyone in person finally has been amazing. John's sort of an ass sometimes, but that's always been true of him, so you take it in stride. He balances it out with super enthusiasm for taking all of you out around his small suburb, and when you return home every evening his dad's there to be crazy accommodating.  
It's the actually going out, that bothers you. While John and his dad are welcoming, they seem to be the odd exception in their neighbourhood. Though most of the people your age here seem to be on friendly terms with John, they stare at you and Dave as if you were wild animals. You don't know if John's oblivious or just ignores it, so you're not sure if you should be cross with him, but you can tell it affects Dave. Where you bridle under the scrutiny, you can see in the way he hunkers over and tries to make himself less visible that it makes Dave anxious. The way he keeps his head down around John's local friends riles you up defensively , though not as much as the way Rose is treated. 

As gross as it feels to be weirdly examined as you and Dave are, especially when that scrutiny becomes leering from some of the boys and men in John's neighbourhood, even that is preferable to the outright disgust and suspicion with which Rose is regarded. The four of you can't go out without someone eyeing her askance or sneering, and while Rose largely rolls with it, it confuses and agitates you.  
The two of you have grown closer in the past three weeks than you could have imagine, and it's given you a surge of protectiveness in your feelings towards her. Ever since she let you steal your first kiss from her on the 4th, since she let you see her super short natural hair and run your nails along her scalp, since the two of you began exploring each other's bodies and falling asleep in each other's arms, you want more than ever to see her happy. That she even has to deal with looks from total strangers gets your hackles up, puts you on edge.  
You know you can't be the only one growing uncomfortable even with John and his dad's efforts to make you feel welcome. Despite Rose's inclination to brush off the looks she gets – or even to play mind games with the people who follow her around when you four visit stores – you know it has to be wearisome for her. She usually seems exceptionally tired on days when all of you have been around large numbers of people. You'll give her the space of your shared room, go downstairs to help with dinner or beat John's ass at _Soul Calibur 4,_ and more often than not she'll sequester herself in there with Dave. 

Though the four of you all generally take for granted that John and Dave are best friends, in person the bond between Dave and Rose strikes you as somewhat deeper. Her habit of picking at and carefully considering each of her friends counters well against Dave's tendency towards defensive aloofness and glib deflection. They both have fairly reserved personalities, which play off each other sometimes better than they do you or John's exuberance. Rose seems to have made it comfortably past Dave's protective front with her ability to best read his moods. Which is probably for the best, because Dave has been a nervous wreck since you got here. 

You already understood that Dave would probably be pretty shy when you met him. It wasn't hard to see that he talked big online, especially after five years of knowing him and seeing him in his less cultivated, more spontaneous moments. Even his old YouTube channel – which you had followed loyally until he abruptly stopped updating – was obvious show-boating for attention, something you found endearingly adorable in an odd way.  
But you hadn't anticipated anxiety from him. You hadn't expected to feel him shaking in your arms when you hugged him for the first time. Shy was how you'd imagined him, not scared, and the more time you spend seeing him nervous and addled, the more you suspect something happened, something changed him the month he disappeared from the internet.  
You can hear him sometimes, on nights like tonight when you're restless. You'll hear him crying or moaning in his sleep, and it upsets you because John acts like there's nothing wrong, even though he _must_ be able to hear it too. Rose told you it wasn't her place to say anything when you asked if she knew something, and though she at least had been profusely apologetic, it is nevertheless incredibly frustrating to think that all three of them are apparently okay with keeping you in the dark. You can't tell if they think you're oblivious, or if they think you wouldn't care, or if they think there's no reason to keep you filled in on your friend's well-being. Each explanation is equally insulting, and when you hear soft, careful footsteps pass you and Rose's door, you decide the best solution is to simply ask directly. 

You slip Rose's arm as the footsteps reach the stairs, pushing back your blankets. She's a reasonably heavy sleeper – the only time you've woken her was when you accidentally kicked her in the stomach and she reached through unconsciousness just enough to hit you back and grumble at you to sleep in a normal position. It allows you to not worry too much about disturbing her when you climb out of bed. Between the dark and your lack of glasses, you're virtually blind as you slip on your skirt from off the floor and grope around for a shirt. The one you pull on must be Rose's, because it rides a little too high on your waist and pulls tight across your chest. You'd feel worse about stretching out Rose's shirts, but the first time you'd apologised, she'd merely snickered to herself.  
In the otherwise still, silent night, it's not hard for you to pick up the noises downstairs as you find your glasses and set them on your face. You hear rummaging and a drawer in the kitchen. You wait until you hear the soft thud of the pantry door closing to leave your room.  
The cold floor beneath your bare feet makes you shiver and you tread as lightly as you can, making your way down the stairs. The light in the pantry is on, casting out weakly into the kitchen as you move through slowly, creeping around the washer and coming to a pause at the window facing John's backyard.  
Yellow light washes out the blue of the oversized hoodie Dave's wearing and catches warm in his hear. His head is bowed as he sits in one of the seats on John's swing-set, but you can see his face, brow furrowed in concentration as he digs a little circular twist into the apple in his palm with a small knife. He has a spot of blood on his thumb and his shades are off and you can see an intensely sad look in his eyes, screened over by his long, pale lashes. 

You always thought Dave had pretty eyes. When you were thirteen you'd thought you had a crush on him, but then he'd told you he was gay. He'd had his shades off then too, eyes scared and ashamed, and you hadn't known what he meant. You'd had to look it up and the whole time he kept apologising. When you actually did understand, you still didn't get why he felt bad about it. You always thought people just liked whomever they liked, that it was pointless to just pick one or the other, and that had made Dave laugh shakily and relax a little. He had told you that normal people only hooked up with the opposite sex and you'd told him that was stupid, he could kiss all the boys he wanted. You'd told him you didn't care, though you cared a little, but only because it meant he wouldn't want to kiss _you._ You didn't care the way he expected you to, though, as if your friendship was to fragile it could be ruined by something so inconsequential, and that seemed to come as a relief to him.  
It hadn't made sense to you then, but it's begun to now. John treats him different than he does you or Rose. He's meaner, more derisive, acts awkward and uncomfortable around him. While you get that some of that may be part of the two of them taking the piss out of each other, it's the sneaky little insults and below the belt jokes John throws at Dave that make it clear why Dave looked so afraid when he confessed to you over Skype two years ago. If even his best friend could be so appalled by such a small thing, then of course he would fear the same of you. 

Dave's head jerks up in surprise as you slip open the back door. Approaching him is like trying to get near some of the animals you have back home. You move slow and he keeps his eyes trained on you with the faintest distrustful wince.  
”I woke you up,” he says, apologetic, hands stilled in their task. You shake your head. The nights here are so fucking cold and you fold your arms across your chest, rubbing the backs of them and pulling Rose's shirt that much looser in the sleeves.  
”I couldn't sleep,” you correct him. “It's too quiet. There's all these people everywhere all day and then it's like as soon as the sun goes down they just disappear.”  
”They ain't gone, Harls,” Dave's laugh is more terse than amused. “They just go back home.”  
”Well, duh!” You flop down on the grass in front of the swing-set, crossing your legs and pulling the ends of your hair out from under your butt. “Doesn't make it any less creepy and quiet here at night.” 

Dave sort of half-heartedly laughs again and looks away, out into the darkness. His knuckles whiten as his fingers flex on the knife in his hand. His lips part, then close, then his throat moves with swallowing. He looks down at his lap when he turns back to face you. 

“So what'd that apple ever do to you?”  
You gesture even though he can't see you and Dave answers with another little insincere cough of a laugh.  
”No, it's, uh...” he breaks off and there it is again – that forced chuckle and Dave the Chatterbox at a loss for words. He rolls the apple in his palm. “I was makin' a pipe,” he mumbles.  
”Oh?” you cock your head a little, letting out a lopsided half-smile, heels of your palms braced on your ankles. “Dave, are you smoking the weed?”  
He answers with a look halfway between a frown and a smirk, and a non-committal shrug.  
”Mind if I join you?” 

You get an honest little laugh for that. With a slight head toss, Dave ineffectually flips his bangs out of his eyes, looking at you wryly.  
”Y'ever even gotten high, Harley?”  
You shrug an answer. “I used to eat these nuts back home,” you tell him. “Bec didn't want me to and one time I did eat too many and got the shits really bad, but mostly they just kept me up and got me a little wired. Probably not the same as pot though.”  
”No, probably not,” Dave's chuckling softly. “What th'hell though, Harls? Y'just eat whatever random shit y'find out in th'jungle?”  
”Well, not all the time!” you put your hands on your hips, mock-cross. “Just...sometimes my garden has a bad crop, so I've gotta supplement it. It's not like I don't know what I'm doing – I know most of what's poisonous and what isn't!”  
”Mostly,” Dave snorts and you whap him on the shin. He settles into a half-smile as he looks down at you, quirking his eyebrows. “Y'really wanna smoke with me?”  
”Well, I mostly wanna hang out,” you admit. “We haven't really gotten a chance to yet. Other than when we go out, I guess, but that's different. There's too many people.” 

Dave looks away when you raise your eyes to his.  
”You know what I mean? I thought it'd be fun seeing all sorts of different people. But everyone here acts the same and it's hard to tell them apart and it get so overwhelming being surrounded by so many of them when it's only ever been me before and it makes it hard to feel like I'm just hanging out with you guys.”  
You punctuate your tumble of words with a huff. The smile Dave gives you this time is a sad one. He looks back down at his hands, turning the apple a bit, before mumbling a small, “Yeah.” and returning to his work. 

_ _ _ 

The Pacific stretches out before you, thunderous and vast. Sand is warm under your bare feet and you can wiggle your toes in it, feel breaths of air weaving through the treeline at your back. You know the rest of your class is in there somewhere. You know Miranda's with them – the girl who kissed you and let you feel her up behind the quads last year, when you were supposed to be walking home. Who called you a fag after a week of making out because you wouldn't put your hand down her pants. You know she's looking for you, pissed. They probably all are, but they won't find you. The wind is whipping up around you, giving you that same, almost flying feeling you get when you're on track, playing through your hair, and you're invisible. All that exists of you is sand under your soles, and the smell of the ocean in your lungs, and currents of air spiralling around you. 

And then arms wind around your waist and ground you.  
Dave presses up against you from behind, hot and solid, his palms tracing you into existence. He seems taller than he should be as his chin rests on your shoulder. You're still remembering the feel of bare skin and a soft cotton bra, touching a girl's breasts for the first time, but Dave's body is moulding against yours. His hands are on your hips, palms worshipping your chest, mouth liquid heat on your neck. His lips move against your skin in words you can't understand, but his voice is low, hungry, sexy, and you feel yourself flush.  
The wind swirls little rivulets around you like running. Dave's skin is bare against yours, his palms are flat against your hammering heart, his hands chase tiny streams of air that trace down your inner thighs. You can feel the shift of his naked body behind yours and his mouth is fastened to to curve of your neck, licking and sucking while his lips find your opposite ear, nipping at the lobe. His hands are everywhere but where they need to be and he's pressing more unintelligible words to your throat. He's coiling molten touch around you and gasping all his desire for you with perfect, soft lips against the shell of your ear, and curling fingers in your hair, digging fingers into your hips, wrapping fingers around your waiting erection. You spine arches for him. You gasp and buck, eyes flying open just as you cum in your pyjamas. 

You bite your lower lip, suppressing a growl of frustration and clenching your sheets as you ride out the last few twitches of your orgasm. You exhale, relax carefully. With your soiled pyjamas sticking and clinging to your skin, you lay awkwardly in the dark until your breathing evens, staring up at the ceiling. You try not to think about the grossness of your jizz cooling in your PJ bottoms. You also try not to think about the uncomfortable implications of your dream, or how you just got off to the idea of Dave groping you, or how good it felt when he was touching you because it's not cool to think about your _friends_ that way, _John!_ Especially not when they're about five feet away.  
With a horrified gasp, you sit up stock straight. You grope around for your glasses, shoving them on your face and peering into the darkness in the direction of where Dave's sleeping. God, you'd never be able to live with yourself if you'd been making noise in your sleep, if he'd heard you busting a nut to the feel of him with his hands on your dick.  
But Dave's mattress appears conspicuously flat. You scoot gingerly to the edge of your bed, mindful of the sticky mess in your pants, and swing your legs off, jabbing at the lump of blankets with one foot. They're cold and unresponsive. You breathe a sigh of relief. 

Moving carefully, you finish the rest of your climb out of bed and sidle over to lock your door. It's a cop-out of a prank, admittedly, but hey, you just woke up, your pants are gross, and they can't all be winners. Besides, you don't really know how long Dave's been gone and it'd be way too fucking embarrassing to have him walk in on you cleaning jizz off your front. Unless that was his thing. But you don't want to think about what _his thing_ might be, because you are resolutely not thinking about whatever implications the bizarre things your sleeping self comes up with might have.  
Annoyed with your body and your unattended mind's apparent desire to make things weird as shit between you and Dave, you peel down your messy pants. Gingerly, you wad them up and use them to clean off your junk, before tossing them into the heinous, amorphous mass of sweaty boy clothes you and Dave have been working on accumulating. You really should get your dad to take care of that soon. Usually he's on top of this sort of thing, but he's been giving the two of you space since Dave got here. Yet another way Dave's presence has been weirding things out. 

You cross to your dresser, pantsless, enjoying the liberty of strutting your own damn room naked, without a spit of self-consciousness. Pulling on a new pair of pyjama bottoms, you debate whether you should change your top to match. It would be pretty funny to wake up tomorrow and act like you didn't know what he was talking about when Dave inevitably pointed out the change, crazy observant as he is. Mis-matched Pjs – incriminating evidence; whole new outfit – instant pranking fodder. You slip out of your old top and pull on the new one. It's a bit heavier, and long-sleeved, but the central air keeps your house nice and tolerably cool regardless.  
With a sigh and a toss of your not really dirty top into the stank pile, you move back to your bed. You yawn and stretch. A puff of breath is forced out of your lungs when you flop backwards onto the mattress and you're bored, it occurs to you that Dave is taking an awfully long time, you frown in consternation at your closed door. He usually takes a while and it bothers you, but you can't put your finger on why. At least, not on any reason other than it's also sort of weirdly endearing and it bothers you how much about Dave you find endearing. Especially when he's been pretty much nothing but aloof and skittish and irritatingly uninterested in being around you, basically since he got here. 

Another sigh and you push yourself up on your elbows, adjust your glasses. You're considering getting up and going to go bug him in the bathroom when you hear an indistinct muffle of voices outside your window. There's a muted exchange, punctuated by Jade's unmistakable, raucous laughter. You shove all the way up off your bed and hurry across your room to peer out the window. Light from your pantry illuminates the spot where you make out two figures huddled in your backyard and a cold jealousy sinks into your stomach.  
Dave is hunkered over in your old swing-set, Jade sitting in the dirt before him. You glance at the clock and can't imagine why they'd be outside at almost two in the morning, but the more pressing thought that comes to you is that they are doing so without you. A scowl settles over your brow. Sneaking out in the middle of the night, it almost seems as if they're deliberately avoiding you. It's something you'd expect maybe from him and Rose, but seeing Jade sends an extra little jab of hurt through you. After all, you thought she at least was above excluding you from shit. 

Grouchy, you move to unlock your bedroom door. You wiggle your feet into your slippers. Maybe they're not leaving you out. Maybe they just couldn't wake you up. Rose isn't with them and she's a pretty heavy sleeper, so maybe they're not having weird little middle-of-the-night get togethers without you. You're not sure you believe it, but as you creep to the head of your stairs, you try and at least convince yourself that you do. 

_ _ _ 

Dave's smiling – unguarded and genuine for the first time since you met him in person. When he talks, he weaves back and forth between English and Spanish like he doesn't notice; like you used to sometimes catch him doing when he was tired and mumbling mostly to himself on Skype. Some slang slips past you, because you've only ever had to pick up Tagalog, Malaysian, and Thai on top of English to get by, but you let it slide. His inflection or a wry twist in expression gets the point across anyway.  
It feels a little silly to be passing a pretty mutilated apple between the two of you. There is a plus side of lingering sweetness on your lips every time time you pull a hit off it, though, and Dave informed you it beats the hell out of using a coke can. You're growing a bit more comfortable with his cheap lighter. If you think about the mechanism that operates it, it helps to make it feel less like a primitive toy in your hand and you have an easier time of not distrustfully fumbling it. The smoke that coils out around the two of you vanishes once it reaches the edge of your little pool of light and it's nice to listen to Dave talk, finally honest and nearly happy for once on this trip. 

He's telling you about a boy he knows in Texas. Sort of not _that_ well, he's sure to clarify, but when he talks about him, even if it's shit, he grins a little. Like he thinks you can't see, or maybe that for once he doesn't care. Dave tells you about this boy who calls him every name in _both_ books, Spanish and English, yet started a brawl in his honour when some other boys called Dave a chalky faggot. He tells you about getting high and drunk with this guy, about messing with him just to see him get flustered and blush. As he tells you all this, he speaks with a fondness that can't help but make you grin. 

“I almost kissed 'im, y'know,” he tells you with a half-smile. “Hell, I prob'ly would'a gotten t'likin' him if-”  
He stops abruptly. It makes you look up from where you've been grinning down at the ground, plucking at individual blades of grass. A terrified and sad expression has settled on his face and he swallows, licks his lips, before his eyes dart back down to yours.  
”If what?” you ask softly. Dave blinks, looks away, and you see tears standing in his eyes. Alarmed, you push yourself up off the ground, ignoring the pins and needles in your toes and the way it feels as if all your blood has settled in your hips and legs. You're hyper-aware of the shift of your hair around your frame, its spill over your shoulders as you stoop and lean to put yourself back into Dave's line of sight. He evades you, bowing his head, and you follow into a hunch. Your first impulse is to take his shoulder, but you remember seeing him cringe when John or his dad touched him, so you balance your hands on your knees.  
”If what, Dave?” you ask again. You know you're almost there. “What happened?” 

He looks up at you bent over him, a pleading furrow in his brow, lips parted. The two of you stare at each other for a long moment and it's intense. You can hear the shake in his breath and see the sheen of tears glazing his eyes. You can feel cold air on your elbows and the sway of the faintest breeze in your hair, draped like a curtain around the both of you, wrapping you up in an odd sense of privacy. Dave falters with a little flinch and he swallows before licking his lips again to speak. 

“Y'can't tell John,” he says, voice rough with smoke, hurried and low. He's searching your face with a pleading expression. “I'll tell y'just...he can't know. Please, y'can't tell'im. John can't know.”  
Just as you open your mouth to reply, you hear the click of the pantry door and the bottom of your stomach drops out. 

“I can't know what?” John's voice is disarmingly cheery, laced under with a certain tightness that raises the hairs on the back of your neck. You stand straight too quickly, blinking hard as you twist to look his way, head light and dizzy. Beside you the chains of the swing-set rattle and uneven footsteps hit the dirt. John laughs as you feel Dave move to shield himself behind your body.  
”Don't be so happy to see me, guys!” John declares. Just barely you feel Dave's forehead against your shoulder, hear his shuddering breath. “What're you guys doing out here? What's that _smell?”_

Dave fumbles to shove the carved up apple into his hoodie pocket. Both you and John catch the movement, him lurching forward towards it.  
”Is that what I'm not supposed to know?” John's jocular tone is malicious, making you move to block his straight shot at Dave defensively. He shoulders past you as an afterthought, knocking you back a step.  
”What the hell, John?!” you yelp in indignation, ignored as he reaches out to grab Dave's arm. The colour drains from Dave's face instantly. You watch him stagger back in clear horror, the apple and his bag of weed falling from his pocket, to the ground. Already affronted at being shoved, the sight of John pig-headedly refusing to release his grip in Dave's arm incites you to shove him from the side, breaking his hold and getting him out of Dave's face. John looks at you, angry, for a beat before turning his attention to the ground. 

“What the hell is this?!” he demands, bending to grab Dave's things. He holds them up in front of both of you accusatorially, as Dave edges away from him, mute in obvious terror. John shoves the baggie towards him, voice dropping to an almost frantic hiss. “Are you guys doing _drugs_ in my backyard?”  
Dave swallows and his lips part, dry of words. John leans forward, making to get in his face again, and you jam your arm across his chest to stop him. He turns to glare first at you, then at Dave.  
”No, seriously, what the fuck, you guys?” he keeps that low, terse voice, but his face is a snarl when he looks at Dave. “What if someone saw you?”  
”John, it's two in the fucking morning,” you retort, “no one's awake!”  
”What if you woke them up?” he hisses. “What if you got caught, huh? How would that look on me? How would that look on my _dad?_ Did you even think of that, or do you just not care?” He rounds the full brunt of his attention back on Dave. “Do you even give a shit? You just care about getting high, huh? That's all you've cared about since you got here – sneaking around behind my back, and leaving me outta shit, and going off with the girls to get high or talk about boys or whatever the fuck fags like you d-” 

You cut John off with a solid punch in the middle of his chest, knocking him on his ass. Dave jumps back. For a second he looks right in your face, cheeks flushed, mortified and stunned, mouth agape and eyes red and brimming with tears. Then he stumbles back, his feet a jumble straightening themselves out as he backs away from you, from John, before flash-stepping out of sight. 

“Dave, wait!” you yell out into the night after him. On the ground where you knocked him, you hear John moving to get up and grumbling.  
”Don't even bother, he's long fucking gone.”  
You sit him back down on his ass with a sharp toe to his ribs.  
”Ow!” John yelps. “Don't fucking kick me, Jade!”  
”Shut up, you fucking deserve it,” you snap, glowering down at him, fists clenched at your sides and shaking with anger. “What is _wrong_ with you?!”  
John glares up at you, gangly legs sprawled in front of him and one arm clutching his side.  
”Are you fucking stupid? He was about to tell me what's going on with him!”  
”Oh, was that his big secret that I can't know about?” John scoffs. “There's nothing fucking wrong with him, he's just being a fucking drama quee- _ow!”_

Your kick connects with his shin this time.  
”You're fucking unbelievable, John! Are you serious? Are you seriously seeing how fucking miserable and out of it he is all the time and calling him a drama queen?!”  
John scoffs again and you almost punch him in the mouth. “He's _high,_ Jade,” he tells you condescendingly. “He's been on fucking drugs since he got here.”  
”You seriously think that's it?!”  
”Well, if it's anything else, he sure as fuck can't be bothered to talk to me about it! You think he's gonna tell you? You think you and Rose are such better friends of his than I am?”  
”Right fucking now I do!” you spit, making John's face twist into a scowl. “Maybe if you acted like his fucking friend instead of being a little asshole to him all the time he'd actually want to talk to you!”  
”Yeah, well, maybe he should fucking act like he even wants to be here first!” John snaps back and you throw your hands up.  
”Oh my actual fucking god, John! You are so fucking selfish!”  
You turn on your heel, stomping back to the pantry door and slamming it behind you. 

_ _ _ 

You stumble and nearly break your ankle when you slam to a stop three doors down from John's place, too fuzzy-headed and panicked to bring yourself out of flash-stepping properly. Down the block Jade's yelling loud enough for you to hear her voice but not her words. Shame and embarrassment wash over you again. You pull your hood up and shuffle quickly down the street, hands shoved deep in your front pocket. Your fingers curl around your lighter, reminding you that John found your weed, John caught you smoking and he fucking hates you now, but maybe it's for the better because you don't even wanna think about what might happen around here if you got busted on an MIP.  
The fear latched onto the back of your neck spikes and your face feels numb, your limbs don't seem attached, you feel anchored above your body by just about half a foot and you don't think you'll ever feel right again, you're stuck one step behind yourself, de-synched, off-shot and by the time you reach the corner of John's block you have to lean against the light post because your thunderous, frantic breath is the only thing you can hear. Jade's not yelling any more. No one's coming for you. The cold metal on your forehead reels you back in, fixes you so that you feel almost normal enough to keep walking instead of leaning against this light like he's your old war drinking buddy. Like he's the only one you can relate to because you both know what it's like to watch a man choke on his own lungs and mustard gas, and you both have PTSD but they don't have that name for it yet so you're just shell-shocked. Rose said you probably have PTSD, that it's common for rape survivors, but you weren't raped, you asked for it, so shows what she knows. 

You shove off the post with one balled up fist and think about Bro mocking the way you stutter when you're afraid of him, and think about seeing shitty, made-for-TV horror movies when you were too young and pissing the bed, and think about asking for it. Still asking for it, hands in your pockets and hood up. Some punkass kid just begging to be harassed by the cops. With a face like yours, with an attitude like yours – too much backtalk to know what's good for you. And your wander is aimless. You don't know these streets, you're just moving to the next pool of light, ears straining for the sound of an engine following you, for the feeling of eyes on the back of your neck and the “What're you doing out so late, son?” that heralds the inevitable justification that your lighter looked like a weapon. 

You sit down on a nearby bench, just to pause a moment, just to steady your racing heart and ragged breath. You press your hands up into your face and your face down into your hands, and rake your fingers back through your hair, taking your hood down with them. You just keep thinking that you relaxed. You relaxed. You let your guard down and you were happy for one brief moment, and you almost told, and you relaxed, and this is what you get. You're not allowed to feel anything any more but fear and paranoia and gross sexual tension.  
It makes you want to lay down on your face and never get back up. You think about the bench you're on and giving up and the cops. Bro warned you never deal with cops, never give them an excuse, just keep your head down and don't fuck around. Not like he's ever had to worry about the cops fucking with him. You hate yourself for thinking shit about your brother and shove off the bench before someone sees you, drift out down the pavement. 

It's quiet and clear and cold. You don't know where you're going because nothing is familiar – you just need to put as much distance as you can between yourself and the trainwreck you've made of your friendship with John. Idle little breaths of wind nip at your exposed skin and you huddle in on yourself more. The streets are so empty here you're sure that if someone jumped you, nobody would notice. Or care, for that matter. You could be dragged off and torn apart again and it would only be a relief to have you purged from this sterile little neighbourhood. Your head spins again with the fear of someone finding you out so late – a cop, a hyper-vigilant resident, hands in the dark – and putting you back in your place. Shivering, you dig your hands into the pockets of your track pants, fingers brushing a folded up bill. 

You'd forgotten. You feel awful for it. 

You don't understand. You don't get how Mr. Egbert can be so kind when no one else wants you to exist, not even his son. Not even your brother. He's so generous and accommodating and gentle. You hate yourself so much for what that does to you that you have to stop and huddle down around your knees and breathe. Your fingers tighten on the $10 bill he gave you, without conditions or asking for anything in return. For no reason other than you might need it.  
It makes you want to pay him back, however he wants. You would do anything he asked of you, in an instant, just to give back a fraction of the kindness he's shown you. You think about it at night when you can't sleep, when you're alone in the shower. You imagine kneeling before him, awaiting his order, feeling his fingers in your hair and tilting your head back to see him over you, benevolent and approving. You want him to hold you the way he touches you when you work together, gentle but firm, in control, guiding. You want to feel his hands on your nape as you swallow him, on your hips as you spread your legs for him, and it horrifies you. It reminds you of the last time you felt this way and you can't do that to him. You can't be that evil little tease that tempts and taxes the limits of his kindness and generosity until he breaks and rips into you, forces what you want onto you.  
The thought makes you shudder, crouch tighter in on yourself, swallow around the terrified lump forming in your throat. You just want him to hold you, to look after you, to treat you like a son, to take you in his lap and rock into you and let you hide in gasps against his skin. You don't understand what the fuck's wrong with you, but you're half hard thinking about him, clutching the money he gave you, curled over your knees on the sidewalk. If someone found you right now, they'd have every right to drag you off, strip you and fuck you like the cheap whore that you are. Hell, all they'd have to do is throw you a few nice words and you'd want it. 

Your head feels thick under pressure, and you clutch at fistfuls of your hair. You squeeze your eyes shut and try to stop shaking. You clench your teeth to bite back the scream and the sob that are fighting each other up the back of your throat. You try to breathe. You feel nothing but guilt and shame, but some part of you is telling you that you have to get up, you have to keep moving, get out of here. Before someone finds you. Before someone sense your true, horrible nature and punishes you for it. You force yourself into a stand, stagger on your feet. It feels like the night itself is watching you and you keep walking. 

You don't pay attention to time when you're stoned; never have. It's still there, of course, ticking away in the back of your mind, but getting stoned helps you ignore it. Time right now is being swallowed in the inky black of the night following you, so you don't know how long you've been walking when bright light ahead breaks the line of darkened houses. Your stomach grumbles a little at the promise made by the sight of a concrete lot and 3-foot-tall beer ads. 

The parking lot in front of the 7-Eleven is empty when your feet find the curb before the front door. You pull your hands out of your pockets, adjust your hood, make sure you look as unsuspicious as possible before heading in. The fluorescents make you wince and blink, the bell over the door painfully loud, and you keep your head down, eyes on the floor, wishing you had your shades. A jingling of keys and shuffling footsteps precede the appearance of the clerk from a back room. His thick black hair stops just above his ears and his uniform t-shirt stretches over a slight pot-belly. He barely acknowledges you past an initial once-over, taking up his post behind the counter silently, his face set in a worn, beleaguered expression. You move around the counter to the hot food.  
From experience, you're unsurprised to see the few hot dogs still left on the display grill have shrivelled with the long hours they've no doubt been sitting out. Miraculously, however, the nacho machine is still on; you're used to the 7-Eleven closest your apartment in Houston shutting theirs down at midnight. The hum of coolers around you and a low-volume radio near the register mitigates the sudden, violent crinkle of cellophane as you tear open an inadequate bag of tortilla chips and dump them into the little black tray in which they're provided. The machine gutters up into a whir when you start it, spitting out a little chunk of hardened cheese sauce that you're too hungry to care about. Watching the rope of fake cheese coiling down into your tray is still a little mesmerizing in your current mental state. You switch off to the chilli side of the machine, which is considerably more spluttering, then back to cheese, the task consuming all of your focus. You move to the condiments and start piling everything on, even the mayonnaise, because if there's one thing Bro pounded into your head when you were a kid, it was that you take the fullest advantage of complimentary food. The prickle of being watched is on your skin, but you can't really blame the guy – he's got nothing better to look at and you're creating an abomination on his side-counter. 

You've got your nacho monstrosity sealed up in its container and have moved on to the ICEE machine when a diesel engine rumbles to a stop in front of the store. A rush of fear shoots up your spine and your shoulders go tight and anxious. There's shouts outside and then, in a burst of noise that drowns out the store bell, the front doors slam open. You know that type of drunken slurring.  
You glance furtively over your shoulder to see three white guys, college-aged and flushed red, blustering into the store. Each one of them has an easy foot on you and is built like a brick shithouse. You know you can scrap, but in your state right now you have no doubt they could destroy you at the slightest provocation and you jerk your body around away from them. You hear them splitting up behind you, one shouting the beer he wants to the others, and you move your half-filled cup away from the machine, act like you're intensely interested in the store's selection of straws, lids, and napkins. 

Footsteps sound close behind you and you refuse to turn around, all your senses latched onto the movement of the guy closest to you. He pauses at the hot dogs while his friends make noise at the back of the store. The clerk's saying something, but you're not parsing it because the guy at your back turns away from the grill in disinterest, moves closer to you. There's the sound of him picking up some wrapped pastry, opening it, chewing. You shuffle a little further, nerves singing, and it's the wrong fucking move because it makes the guy snort derisively.  
You hear a slurred, “Hey.” You hear, “Who're you?” and you pretend you didn't, turning the whole of your body towards the wall. You can feel the menace of the guy looming over you, boxing you in, and your hands shake. Plastic crinkles as he continues eating his fucking Twinkie and your whole body coils for getting the fuck out when a sudden, “Yo, Ricky!” cuts through the tension. You feel the guy turn away behind you with an annoyed, “What?” 

“Yo, this fuckin' towelhead won't sell us no beer!” one of his friends calls from across the store. You hear the rattle and whump of a locked cooler door being yanked on and the clerk behind you is insisting, “Too late! You're too late!”  
”Man, fuck you, Saddam!” A third voice laughs cruelly and there's a crash that almost makes you drop to the floor as if it were a gunshot. The clerk starts yelling at the three guys to get out and you dare not turn around. More derisive laughter fills the store, another crash, a glass pop and the smell of beer. Shouts are being exchanged, but you can't hear the words over the panic ringing in your ears or your harsh breath as you press your face against the wall, eyes squeezed shut. When the bell at the door sounds again, it's like a klaxon rattling around your skull. Shouting is still happening, though some becomes muffled, and then there's the sound of that diesel engine and peeling out tires.  
The clerk's voice drops to furious cursing in undertones and you sag against laminated adverts for new ICEE flavours and a curling paper notice that all employees must wash hands before returning to work. The wall acts as the only support for your shaking legs and tremor-afflicted spine. Behind you, the clerk's footsteps cross the floor towards where you're standing. The flimsy little swinging door that barricades the register from the rest of the store claps with movement. 

You force yourself upright when the clerk asks if you're all right. He asks you if you're ready on account of he has to clean up, and you turn to look out at the store, still shaking a little, light harsh in your fear-dilated eyes. A free-standing rack of bagged candy and nuts is overturned near the front door. Nearer the coolers, a display stack of Bud Lite half racks has been toppled, oozing shitty beer and shards of glass across the linoleum. You nod silently at the clerk, not raising your eyes to his. Picking up your rapidly cooling nachos and your half-filled cherry ICEE, you mirror his movement towards the register, the two of you separated by a barricade of grill, gum racks, and candy displays. Eyes on the counter, you notice the tremor in his hand matching yours when you pass him your ten. You thank him softly when he hands you back your change. 

Adrenalin has knocked most of your high right out of you. You don't go further than the curb in front of the store, sagging to the ground with your legs sprawled in front of you, not yet ready to face the darkness beyond the parking lot lights. The sound of a mop bucket clatters, muffled, in the store behind you and you eat slowly, throat feeling tight. You concentrate solely on your food, trying to calm down, trying not to think about how you'll find your way back to John's house, or if you'll even be welcome there when you do. 

_ _ _ 

By this point in your life, you have grown into the habit of daily routines. Morning is no exception, with only minor variance between summer and the rest of the year to accommodate preparing John a healthy breakfast before he's off to school. On these brighter mornings you have the luxury of a longer shower and an unhurried shave. Once you've freshened up for the day, you'll head downstairs to make a light breakfast of eggs on toast. The coffee goes on to brew and you head out into the living room to fetch the morning paper. When the toast springs up and your eggs finish frying, you'll cloister yourself in your study to enjoy your meal and a pipeful of tobacco as the day's first headlines coax you into the outside world. 

When you open your front door, however, for one brief moment your stomach sinks. In place of your morning paper, there lies curled at your feet a very thin, very frail- and chilled-looking, familiar young man. Your sudden presence half rouses him, draws an awkward shuffle of movement from him which drives away your initial surprised and pushes you to action.  
”Dave!” you gasp in concern, kneeling beside him and curling an arm around his shoulders without a second thought. He has on an oversized hoodie you recognise as John's, damp with morning dew and heavy on his frame. You can feel little tremors of shivers under your touch, even as he shifts again to acknowledge your presence.  
”M'sorry,” the croak is faint and meek and you barely catch it, but it makes you frown in concern nonetheless. Squeezing his shoulders, you hush him gently.  
”There's nothing to apologise for,” you assure him softly. “What happened? Why aren't you upstairs?”  
Your son's friend does little more than shudder in your arms in response. His hair is as damp as his sweater when you lay your hand on it, telling the top of his head delicately that he should come inside. When you lift him, his legs are unsteady, as if he's had them curled to his chest as they were for hours. You brace his stumble, the arm around his shoulders clutching a little tighter and the hand in his hair dropping to hook under his arm. Under the layers of chilled trembling and wet cloth, you can feel his warm body and the shy flutter of his heart. It's enough to make you pause, gives you a moment to enjoy the way he curls into your chest. You push that attention aside and force yourself back on to the matter at hand. 

The rattle-hiss of brewing coffee carries from the kitchen and your senses sharpen at the deliciously bitter-earth scent that permeates the air. You feel the soft press of his cheek against your chest, the barely traceable movements of his lips through the fabric of your shirt. He's mumbling another apology. His arms are stiff at his sides, shaking like his shoulders. When you hush him again and hug him a little tighter, one arm timidly circles your back. Fingers slide over the thin cotton of your shirt and a careful palm rests against your spine. You stifle the hitch of your breath and focus on navigating him towards the couch. His clothes are cold and damp and you have far more important things to attend than your rampant imagination.  
He seems reluctant to release you when you seat him and pull away. The hesitance of his touch to leave what small purchase it's found on your body makes you pause fleetingly, holds your own fingertips where they've stopped at his shoulder and in his hair. For a brief, irresponsible moment your mind plays with the image of him shy and trembling and curious beneath you, the idea of exploring the no doubt limited breadth of his experience and coaxing from him a desire to learn more, to embolden his gestures and careful touches, to wrap his legs around your hips or sling his ankles over your shoulders.  
The stream of increasingly illicit thoughts that springs to life from the sparest, most innocent touch of this young man's hands makes you swallow hard and right yourself. Straight-backed, you assure him you'll return shortly with something to warm him up, silently castigating yourself with your usual system of checks and reminders. With force you bring to the forefront of your mind that he is your son's best friend. You struggle to clear your mind of all else as you enter the kitchen, putting on a kettle to boil and retrieving a second mug to set beside your own 

Not only is he John's friend, you must reiterate to your errant mind, but he is also a minor currently in your care, and the consequences of indulging any of your impulses towards him are not lost on you. There is a shaken sort of fragility to him, this tension in his shoulders as if he is anticipating some impending catastrophe, that makes you want to hold him in your arms until he is at ease. You want to stroke his hair and feel him melt against you, feel the heat of his breath on your skin and the shudder of his relaxing muscles as he slumps pliable against you because _you cannot stop your mind wandering to that place._ You cannot shut out the imagined feel of his flushed skin, the unheard sounds of his breathless gasps and moans because there is this undercurrent of sex and desire threaded through his every action. You know you can't be imagining it. It makes you think of where you found him living, of children forced to grow up to fast, and, increasingly, it is jarring you out of your ability to think of him as a young boy. Not when he finds excuses to press against your shoulder or lean into your hand on his back. Not when you overhear him make some crude remark to your son, or when you can tell, even through his shades, that his eyes are fixed hungrily upon you. It occurs to you that it may be high time to take another weekend business trip – if you don't, you're uncertain of what you might do instead. 

Measuring out the right amount of sugar, cocoa, and powdered milk is a thoughtless task for which you've long since lost the need of measuring spoons. You pour hot water over the fine mixture in one mug, stirring it as you serve yourself a cup of straight black coffee in the other. Quashing your wandering thoughts for the second time in less than ten minutes, you return to the living room with both of them in hand.  
Your son's friend is curled over his knees where you left him on the couch. When you hand of the mug of hot chocolate you prepared, he accepts with skittish, jilted motions. His eyes dart to your face, but can't quite meet your own and flick away anxiously. He is bereft of his usual shades and without them his face looks bare and tired. There's an empty, heavy lightlessness in his eyes that you used to sometimes see, when you volunteered at the boy's shelter before John. It was always accompanied by bruised arms and muted voices. The only other place you've seen it is on the faces of your few companions who have carried all their possessions with them, clutched close in old backpacks. The young man sitting before you casts that same long stare down into the cup in his hands. You find yourself engulfed by a rush of emotions – you want to coddle him, comfort him, feel him writhing and sweating beneath you. But most powerfully, you want to hold him. 

Your mug taps lightly on the surface of the end table as you set it aside to swiftly sit beside him. Even as you extend an arm to embrace him, he lurches so suddenly into your touch that your mercifully quick presence of mind is all that prevents him from spilling his drink in your lap. Taking the cup from him, you place it next to its partner as his body moulds against yours. His breath is hot on your skin through the thin layer of your dress shirt, into which he has needfully twisted his fingers. You curl around him, one hand on his free shoulder while your other arm covers his back, finds a hold on his narrow waist. He small enough that you could pull him right into your lap. But the feel of his slender bones under your hand is already beginning to make your pants uncomfortably tight, and you have no intention of startling him with your arousal at such a crucial moment.  
His skinny little body is warm against yours despite the heavy, still slightly damp layer of his sweater. You risk burying your nose in his hair, inhaling his scent – fresh morning air and a faintly lingering hint of marijuana that surprises and concerns you. A tiny whimper answers the gesture, followed by the same mumbled lines as before. He's apologising, even as you're wrapping him in your hold. It makes your heart aches as much as it sends a shiver of desire down past your gut. You squeeze his shoulder and breathe him in deep a second time before you speak.  
”Dave, you needn't apologise,” you tell him tenderly, feeling the brush of his hair on your lips and imagining nuzzling through it to find bare skin to nip, suck, and so draw forth little cooing gasps of surprised pleasure. “You've done absolutely nothing wrong. You're okay – everything's okay.” 

He nearly collapses into you, breath rushing from his lungs in almost a sob. The apologies try to start back up, but you shush them down. Strong, skinny fingers curl a hold on your tie, unwittingly giving your prick a little surge of lust. You shift nervously, remove your hand from his shoulder and cast about for the throw. He's still got that damp sweater, after all – you want to make sure he warms back up. That the throw is large enough to cover the both of you is incidental, you justify. Even as you delicately drape it over the length of his arm across your chest and the incriminating bulge in your lap. Even as you settle your hand again, this time on his hip, as the other leaves his waist to cradle the back of his head. A nervous thrill wells in the back of your throat as the tender young man in your arms shifts under the new intimacy you've wrapped around the two of you.  
His right arm is pinned awkwardly between himself and the back of the sofa, shoulder tucked up into your underarm. He wriggles a little in your hold, readjusts to free it, repositions himself. A part of you chastises as childish the shiver of excitement that draws your prick's attention when it recognises the clumsy stealth of movement against you. The breath that washes over your throat is warm and moist as you feel the softness of a cheek laid on your shoulder, face turned upward. New fingers find your tie with another breath-hitching tug, as its former possessors settle lightly on your stomach, just barely close enough to brush your belt. Thoroughly, helplessly tempted, when the rock of a body against yours brushes a knee over the top of your thigh, you respond with a firm hand pulling the hips in your hold flush against you. 

A gasp answers the move and you curl a little closer around the body in your grasp. Without pretence, you bury your face in the sweet curve of a slender, long-desired neck. Something has been silently breached, its evidence in the almost frantic scrabble of fingers against your belt that responds to your gesture. It takes all your willpower not to grab the wrist at your waist and push it down further, press small, deft fingers against the proof of his effect on you. A delicate tremor shakes the body curled against yours, making you roll your eyes closed and bury your face in his smell. So far, you can reason that you haven't quite passed the threshold of decency. You feel you're still in a position in which you can back out, pass this off as merely a bout of physically intense comfort. Even with your hold on his hip a mere thought away from seizing handfuls of his deliciously ample backside. Even with your lips against his soft skin, waiting for the sign to part and lick and suck and bite.  
He needs to make the final move. You need him to initiate it, for it to be his idea, not yours. He needs to want it. It's up to him to crane his head back, to bare his neck and soft jawline to you, to slip skinny fingers under your waistline so you know it's okay to want him. He needs to be the one seducing you. 

Shaky, panting breath rattles in your ear. It picks up speed, fingers twitch against your belt. You give his hip a reassuring squeeze, stroke his hair softly. A deep breath cuts through the tension. 

A fumbling hand tugs at your belt buckle and you hear the jingle of the alarm clock in your study. It jars you enough to make you jump and Dave's hand shoots away from your waist as you lift your head. In the heat of the moment, you had honestly forgotten about your interrupted routine. Dave slips your hold, draws away from you with his face downturned and stamped with shame. His freckle-dusted cheeks are flushed a deeper, ruddy brown and he's curled back in on himself. Mercifully, the throw still covers both of your laps.  
You feel ridiculous as you clear your throat and stand, quick to turn away and head towards your study. Really! A man your age skulking about and awkwardly trying to hide your arousal like a boy caught with some dirty magazine. Hidden in your study, you rake a frustrated hand through your hair.  
This is foolish. You flick off the still ringing alarm and take a deep breath. In silence you close your eyes, sigh again, rub your jaw thoughtfully. Honestly, this is more than foolish – this is dangerous. There are reasons you don't actually bring your intimate life home. Most of them revolve around John. You know he wouldn't understand, he may even be upset. But more than that you worry how it would reflect on your parenting, how quickly you might lose him should your secret become public. No – this right now is risky, dangerous. You don't know enough about the young man currently in your living room to be sure your secrets would stay safe. You drag fingers through your hair again. 

With a heavy sigh, you readjust your pants, straighten your tie, smooth down your shirt. You still have your day before you and if you squander much more time you'll be late for work. For a quick moment you think of the lips that were so perilously close to your throat and distract yourself combing down your hair. 

A frightened sort of tension greets you when you walk back out into the living room. From the corner of your eye you catch the movement of Dave's cringe at your re-entrance. He needs reassurance. If nothing else, for your safety he needs to not feel jilted. You cross unhurriedly to the sofa. He's wrapped himself in the throw and from arm's length you can still see him shaking. With a twinge of sorrow, you wonder whether he's still cold, or if it's the fearful anxiety you've seen well in him a few times at the potential for conflict.  
”You should get some rest,” you tell him tenderly, brushing a few strands of hair back from his face. The morning's moisture has left it curlier than you've usually seen, accenting his full features. He flinches from your touch and you frown in concern. “The cocoa will help – you should get warmed up, at the least.”  
He nods faintly, face down and every part of his body help close and small and exuding deep humiliation. The sight draws a little sympathetic knit between your brows, but you have to go before morning rush hour really sets in. You hurry to the closet by the front door, slip on a jacket and don one of your hats. As you fetch your briefcase, you turn back for one final, concerned glance. On your sofa, Dave has moved little more than to hunch over his knees further. Your heart aches to return and pull this young man into a warm embrace that could ease his distress. 

But the morning is getting on without you. At the very least, John and their other friends will be up in a few hours. There's no doubt that seeing them will lift his spirits. With a sigh, you reluctantly pull your thoughtful gaze from Dave and exit into the crisp, cloudless day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this took so long ._.

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from:  
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAe1WjW-GPs


End file.
